This tariff gambit better work

President Donald Trump has rolled all the dice from his casinos on being right about imposing reciprocal tariffs on every nation around the globe. It is a monumental gamble.

He and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent better be proven right ― not for their sakes but for our country’s sake. If proven right, Trump will be remembered along the lines of the greatest presidents in U.S. history.

If not, he will be forever remembered as the president who imposed tariffs and brought the country down like Herbert Hoover. If we go into a Great Depression and see soup lines and 25% unemployment, everyone who voted for Trump will have to eat a plateful of hot steamed crow and admit they made a huge mistake.

If he is right, and every trading partner is forced to drive tariffs on American goods flowing to their consumers to zero, then the world may see an economic explosion of such magnitude that it not only makes America but every EU country, Zimbabwe and China “great again” as well.

Free trade is such a simple concept, but it has been virtually impossible to achieve in the world since the beginning of time. Farmers and mercantilists always have enough political sway to force their governments to put up high tariff barriers to protect their incomes and way of life.

Liberals are now oh-so-concerned about higher tariffs causing consumers to pay much higher prices on imported goods. What is the liberal rationale for imposing higher taxes on corporations, then? Don’t they raise costs on products for consumers too?

If liberals didn’t have faulty logic, they wouldn’t have any logic at all.

Once this tariff gambit is settled, Republicans should ask every Democrat now screaming about higher tariffs to join them in an effort to get rid of the corporate income tax as well. “Help consumers buy American stuff much cheaper!” can be their slogan.

If tariffs were so terrible, why did all the nations that America helped rebuild post-World War II, such as Japan, impose high tariffs and then grow and prosper? Japan in the 1980s was viewed as the biggest economic threat to America, not communist China.

Eliminating tariffs is only part of the “helping consumers pay less” story. The really important next step toward reestablishing true free trade in America is to get rid of the regulatory “tariffs” our elected government has willfully imposed on our own American economy and almost strangled it to death.

Doing so will make U.S. goods that much more competitive pricewise on world markets.

The National Association of Manufacturers issued an important update in 2023 that showed the U.S. government ― not China nor any foreign adversary ― has put U.S. business at a 12% cost disadvantage solely due to legislation and promulgated regulations by aggressive agencies such as the EPA.

Twelve percent of U.S. GDP, more than $3 trillion in a $25 trillion economy, is paid by U.S. businesses solely to comply with federal regulations. Small businesses bear a disproportionate share of this cost burden on a per-employee basis because they have fewer employees over which to amortize the cost of compliance.

All of these regulations, much of which are outdated or unnecessary today, drive up the cost of U.S. products and put American business at a competitive disadvantage vis-à-vis foreign competitors before they even think of imposing high tariffs, barriers to entry, currency manipulation and flat-out cheating to frustrate American entry into their economies.

One wry observer used to say that if Congress really wanted to equalize the playing field, the U.S. should export half of the trial lawyers to the rest of the world. Their tort costs would rise exponentially and the playing field of liability insurance costs and legal fees would be leveled.

There may be other things going on in the background behind this risky gambit. The U.S. has $9 trillion of two-year debt instruments due to be refinanced this year, with most due by the end of summer. The Treasury Department obviously would love to refinance at below 3% rather than way above it. Eliminating $1 trillion of wasteful spending through DOGE on top of driving world investors to invest in the relative safety of U.S. bonds would make interest rates far lower than they were three months ago.

Once Trump’s tariff gambit yields its intended result (hopefully) of zero tariffs worldwide plus compliance with his wishes to defend U.S. borders from illegal immigration and a shared burden for defense spending, every effort should be made by Trump and the Republican-led Congress to go after the cost of our excessive domestic regulatory “tariff” ― and eliminate it to lower costs to consumers even further.

Here’s to Trump being remembered as a great president ― and not Herbert Hoover.