…this debate format can be entertaining:
I’m intrigued by the factors which lead people to different worldviews.
All three flat-earthers in this discussion agreed that the Internet played a huge role in their position.
As I watched this discussion, it was easy to draw parallels with political worldviews.
My suspicion. Flat earthers aren’t really about the shape of the earth. I mean, it is a big deal to them of course, but it’s not their main focus point. They feel that reality is being taken away from them. Science is developing so much at such a fast pass that today only a very small segment of people really understand the contemporary subjects. These are often disparaged as the “intellectual elite” by them. So, this conspiracy theory is a way to take back reality into their hands, to maintain a sense of control and self-importance in the grand scheme of things. There is also a sociological trap. Once enfolded into the conspiracy community, most… if not all… of their close friends all share the conspiracy belief. That is what binds the community together, thus rejecting the conspiracy later may risk becoming exiled from said community.
Interesting case studies analysed here:
Yes, I see this pattern often of (1) tribalism and shared community, and (2) a sense of taking-back-something from the “elite” because the elite leave them feeling afraid and inferior (a lifelong sense.)
I see it often among my MAGA associates/neighbors. Most of them struggled in high school—and only a minority of them made it into the college-bound track of courses. [That’s what it was called in my day. For example, the English courses were rated as Track I,II, and III, the last track being college-bound. Same with math: the college bound students took Algebra I while the Track II students took courses like “Business math” and the Track I students took “General Math.” College-bound took biology. The others took earth science. [I have no idea why earth science was taught as if it was a “simpler” field of science.] Another interesting phenomenon: The football and basketball coaches taught the lowest track courses. Of the coarches, only the tennis coach taught something advanced like Algebra II and geometry.]
In the video I posted it is clear that they feel pride in understanding cosmology better than the PhDs on the other side of the room. If you don’t like the idea of someone knowing more than you, you probably will find a welcoming community among flat-earthers. You can sit around and lament how the smart guys are actually really stupid.
I’m really fascinated to see what will happen as the stock market continues to crash and the chaos worsens. Just two weeks ago I was told by friends (?) that my predictions of DOGE disaster and the promised tariffs causing a stock market crash—and a painful recession—were ridiculous because “These billionaires got that rich because they are business geniuses” and because “You don’t understand anything about economics but Trump does.” Others of the tribe egged them on.
Clearly none of the MAGAs I talked with had ever heard of Smoot-Hawley and only one understood that tariffs are mostly paid by consumers, not the source-country. (That one outlier had a convoluted argument for why the source-country “sort of” and “eventually” paid the tariff.)
I’m told that all of Trump’s family divested from the stock market early last week [Note: unverified]. The appearance is that someone understands the economics of the situation, even if they do not grok *insider trading."
Told by whom? Got a source?
If tariffs are so uniformly bad for the consumers in the country levying the tariffs, it seems reasonable to ask why so many countries have tariffs on U.S. goods? I’ve seen this quite personally – when I send materiel to my Chinese colleagues there is a significant tariff involved, but when they send me equipment there is none. So for me a follow-up would be to ask whether all those other countries having tariffs on U.S. goods is reasonably characterized as “free trade”?
By my wife this morning, but a quick google doesn’t find any confirmation.
Who has claimed that tariffs are “uniformly bad”? Certainly no one here.
Try again.
Meanwhile, I will reiterate what I wrote:
(1) None of the MAGAs I talked with had ever heard of Smoot-Hawley.
(2) All but one totally believed this administration’s claims that tariffs are paid by the source-country.
As to your other questions, regardless of to whom they were directed:
Tariffs are NOT necessarily “uniformly bad for the consumers in the country levying the tariffs” when that government has, for example, decided that the welfare of those consumers is increased through tariffs.
An example is Japan levying high tariffs on agricultural goods produced by its own farmers. The Japanese suffered from severe food shortages and even starvation to various degrees in WWII, due to embargos and losses of farm workers to war mobilization. So it makes sense for them as an island nation to want their farmers to thrive with protected markets. They have reasoned that it is better for Japan’s consumers to pay higher food prices than to risk starvation during another national crisis.
It is certainly a reasonable question and one that is covered in any first year macro-economics textbook or even high school civics (at least it was in my day.) So many countries have tariffs on U.S. goods for many of the same reasons why the U.S. has had tariffs on incoming international goods since the first tariff act in 1789. Tariffs are used to protect or equalize or favor particular sectors of an economy and to raise income for the government. They can also be used for various geopolitical strategies. (Big topic for another time.)
Ever wonder why you rarely see a European-manufactured light truck in the USA? It goes back to 1964 when the USA imposed a tariff on light trucks against European countries which were imposing a tariff
on American chicken. Those European countries eventually dropped the chicken tax but the USA never ended that 25% tariff on light trucks. (That big surcharge is still called by people in the truck business, “the Chicken Tax.”) I can imagine that European light track manufacturers don’t think that that one-sided tax for over half a century is fair at all.)
Yeah, I would bet that most of us have dealt with tariffs and import/export fees. (And those who have also lived abroad have probably experienced such costs from both USA and non-USA perspectives.)
I remember my publishing operation shipping to people in South Africa back in the 1980’s and professors there complaining that they paid an extra 40% above and beyond the difficult exchange rate to buy the U.S. dollars to send to me because their government was trying to address their currency crisis. They were trying to prevent an economic collapse in that country.
Many years ago Congress dropped the tariffs for Americans buying from abroad under the de minimis rule. (I can remember when it used to be on under-$200 orders and in more recent years got raised to $800. This was NOT done to help foreign countries but because American consumers/taxpayers wanted it! This was especially popular with American tourists shopping abroad who wanted to ship their purchases home.)
I’ve heard that that de minimis exemption is ending due to bipartisan support in Congress. Yes, that is how democracy works. It certainly isn’t China’s fault or any other country’s fault. It is a USA decision.
And an equally valid follow-up would be to ask if nearly 250 years of all sorts of tariffs on imported goods in USA is "reasonably characterized as free trade?” My answer would be that it depends upon your definition of “free trade.” And like many other terms in economics it exists on a spectrum. Personally, I like to see a lot of free trade but am fine with carefully applied tariffs on particular goods and services to address a particular issue. Of course, that is why countries, including the USA, have employee trade representatives who help work out such things. (They don’t simply blather and bully, a tactic which rarely works out well for anybody.)
Of course, this administration apparently doesn’t believe in free trade because they are also pursuing the ridiculous goal [or so they say] of equalizing the balance-of-trade between the USA and all other countries. Tell me, why should a huge and rich country like the USA be restricted to buying from LESOTHO (or Peru, or Cambodia, or whatever) ONLY as much as they buy from us? A tiny country where consumers have very little disposable income can NOT be expected to balance trade with the USA. (Yet, Trump’s silly “tariff chart” doesn’t really deal with tariffs at all. He admits that it is some kind of crazy “equalizing formula” for balance of trade. Meanwhile, he leaves out the HUGE imbalance where the USA enjoys a big surplus of EXPORTS of services. Why are those not part of the big picture?)
Meanwhile, higher tariffs on coffee won’t encourage coffee growing in Mississippi. It will only make coffee more expensive.
In any case, history shows us that the more free trade we have (even with the complications of tariffs and other obstacles, like differing quality control requirements), the more EVERYBODY prospers. Trump pretends that Americans are “getting ripped off” by China—but a basic rule of economics is that buyer and seller don’t complete a transaction UNLESS they both consider themself better off after that transaction is completed. Nobody forces Americans to buy cell phones from Asia. They WISH to buy them because America values FREEDOM. (And as an engineering faculty colleague told me long ago, “If Americans had to buy their smartphones made in America, without the skills of Chinese engineers who design the production lines, they would cost over $80,000 each.” Believe it or not, that is not pure hyperbole.)
And international trade produces more market efficiency and economies of scale. That’s one of the reasons why my generation has enjoyed much more prosperity than my grandfather’s generation.
My grandfather was born in 1877, so his life until about 1900 was difficult due to the terrible economic conditions which existed for MOST Americans in that era. Yet Trump somehow believes it was America’s “richest” years. I guess he didn’t go to class and learn about the Panic of 1873 that produced a very long economic calamity. Indeed, my grandfather joked about how “The Depression” was originally a euphemism for telling his PARENT’s generation that the 1930’s were just a mild “depression” rather than the full scale PANIC they suffered under in the late 1800’s.
Of course, for Trump, the late 1800’s WOULD sound like a great era because for robber barons and the super-rich upper-classes, it was a wonderful time.
I hope this helps to clear up your questions on these topics.
I appreciate this nuance, albeit it being contrary to the mainstream media drumbeat that tariffs equal bad, bad, bad. At least in principle these current tariffs and threatened tariffs can indeed be in the U.S. consumer’s best interest.
I think, unfortunately, that this is a straw man. Or at least I have never heard anything from this administration regarding balance of trade that would restrict buying from a given country only as much as they buy from us. What I have heard repeatedly is balancing the playing field, with reciprocal tariffs if necessary. Do you have actual quotes, sources for this more restricted view you’ve outlined above? Because this sounds like it might be in the category of another assertion made by above by someone else without adequate support.
I think part of the problem is that invocation of Smoot-Hawley, in this context, is not ad rem. I’d argue it’s an apples to oranges comparison. Granted, both contexts have “tariff” in them, but valid comparisons break down fast after that. S-H was not deployed to redress an imbalance of tariffs levied against the U.S. – the opposite of today – and it was deployed in the context of a U.S. trade surplus, versus a massive trade deficit – again, the opposite of today. I’m in favor of as many people in the U.S. being as educated as possible, but merely to rub someone’s nose in ignorance on this particular point seems to me to be a rhetorical device without sufficient substance.
What the MAGA folks of your acquaintance are probably saying and seeing, ostensible ignorance of Smoot-Hawley not withstanding, is that there are indeed significant distortions in the balance of trade, tariffs, supply chains, border security, and manufacturing inequalities, all in favor of China and other trading partners. These factors have resulted in cheap goods here, yes. But people are starting to wake up to the fact that “cheap” comes with a price – loss of a robust domestic manufacturing base with all the economic fallout that goes with that and loss of national security. That’s the alternative idea that’s now been presented to them and increasingly they agreed that it aligns with their lived experience. So they exercised their freedom and voted accordingly. Now they’re increasingly willing to exercise their freedom to pay more to change this status quo. It’s a valid matter of debate, not something that can be dismissed simply as the product of ignorance.
In that vein, cf. journalist Michael Shellenberger’s recent analysis of the phenomenon: [https://x.com/shellenberger/status/1907941209177468978?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email]
The clip is worth watching in full, but here are a few salient quotes:
Shellenberger goes on to cite the work of British historican Arnold J Toynbee, who analyzed the collapse of various civilizations.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but I dare say that your MAGA friends may see you as one of the educated elites who is significantly out of touch with their every day experience and what they’ve seen happen to them, their families, and their communities as a result of policies that “experts” and “elites” insisted would be good for them. They’re disinclined to simply, unquestioningly go along with it anymore, because for them it hasn’t and doesn’t work. And the argument is very much there to be made, as it is even by other bona fide experts, that serious corrective actions are necessary, even if they result in short-term economic discomfort. That’s what’s playing out now. This, like many of issues of our day, is one where reasonable, educated, thoughtful people can disagree because it’s not a “slam dunk” of educated elites over uneducated deplorables. Neither in this case is it (to bring it back to the OP) simply folks wanting to feel superior to the educated elites, regardless of the facts. No, the facts on the ground are that the imbalanced trade situation, open borders, etc. are not working in the best interests of these people. The “experts” and elites have failed them in concrete, lifechanging ways.
Do “many countries” have significant “tariffs on U.S. goods”?
The “tariffs” that the Trump Adminstration was purporting to ‘reciprocate’ weren’t real tariffs – they were a measure of trade imbalance.
Many of the countries being hit have minimal average tariffs on US goods. I think my native New Zealand’s average tariff was less than 2%. We got hit with a 10% tariff by Trump (‘reciprocating’ a claimed ‘tariff’ of 20%).
Addendum: the actual number is 1.8%.[1]
China is a notable exception – it has long had a heavily protectionist regime.
Yes – with a few exceptions, such as China.
That may not be what they are saying, but it is definitely what they are doing. As I said above, the “tariffs” that they are ‘reciprocating’ aren’t actual tariffs, but a measure of trade imbalance (specifically, a country’s trade surplus with the US divided by its total exports to the US).
Are you saying that Trump and the Republican Party made it clear to the American electorate that his proposed policies would result in them paying the tariffs (and not China etc.)? That these decisions would cause rising prices for a vast swathe of consumer goods, inflation, less money in their pocket, a stock market meltdown with a likely impact on their pension pots, very possibly a recession, counter-tariffs imposed by other countries on American products and other negative effects as an immediate result?
Did they make all that clear before the election?
If they did not, they are guilty of misleading the electorate.
Oh dear… I didn’t expect my previous comment to become so prophetic.
Although the difference was that my comment referred to flat earther’s who are very resentful against scientists but it works here too. You don’t like it when someone understands the subject of discussion better than you, so you resort to smearing @AllenWitmerMiller character as an “educated elite”.
Not only is this just an ad hominem attack… I find the sheer irony of this infuriating.
You defend MAGA by disparaging the “educated elite”?? Really!? Give me a break!! Donald J. Trump (and his billionaire cabinet) are part the elite class and Trump is unabashedly proud of it; bragging about his elite education, claiming to be a “smart guy” because of his “great genes”.
“I have Ivy League education, smart guy, good genes. I have great genes and all that stuff which I’m a believer in..”
Donald Trump, campaign rally in Biloxi, Mississippi, in 2016
But here is the plot twist… he is actually very stupid (or he is lying). The tariffs is just one example of this. Trump describes tariffs as “a tax on another country”. Like no, that’s absolutely not how tariffs work, and you don’t need to go through college to know this. US Tariffs are a tax imposed on those within the USA who are importing foreign goods (sometimes on exports too).
Secondly, as @Tim just mentioned, the Trump administration claims to have reciprocated “tariffs” imposed on the U.S. but these were NOT tariffs. They used a formula to calculate the figures, but looks more complex than it is. For one, two variables cancel each other out (equal to 1), and the formula ends up defining “reciprocal tariff” as simply dividing the US trade deficit with a given country by their total exports to the US.
So, the New Zealand tariff of 20% mentioned by @Tim likely means that the US trade deficit with New Zealand’s is equal to 20% of total New Zealand’s export value to the US. None of this represents tariffs. It’s so gosh darn stupid.
The tariff war is already causing economic turmoil, and the people who will feel the most pain are the working class… NOT the elite. The elite will continue to push for reducing taxes on the rich (i.e. themselves) while gutting programs like social security and medicare. But when this happens, the out-of-touch Trump will say that “sometimes you have to take medicine” and go through the pain. At the same time MAGA people will insist that these policies will be good for them, and they simply, unquestioningly go along with it, even if they, their families, and their communities suffer through the mess every single day. That is what is going to happen.
It’s not a straw man. It’s been openly stated by the administration.
Reciprocal tariffs are calculated as the tariff rate necessary to balance bilateral trade deficits between the U.S. and each of our trading partners.
Then you need to read some of the White House press releases and watch a few press conferences!
A tariff is most certainly an ECONOMIC RESTRICTION, especially when it is being used as Trump said it was to be used: to force a balance of trade.
That restriction is not a total ban—but when a tariff is high, it often restricts one’s ability to acquire a product at a reasonable price. Indeed, some tariffs will be so high that it will effectively prevent 99% of Americans from buying the product. MOREOVER, tariffs prevent some products from even being offered for sale in many areas of the USA. For example, with light trucks, when the “chicken tariffs” hit in the 1960’s, many cities lost their dealerships for those products. (And just this morning I read about various brands which have suspended shipments to the USA. I recall Jaquar being among them. I would call that a RESTRICTION on availability. I know little about the retail auto business but I can certainly predict that product brands from various market sectors will be lost entirely in the USA if this madness continues. That is a restriction.)
Yes, that is the propaganda. Previous replies have already exposed the rubbish of that “balance.”
Yes. Go to the White House website. Or read the links already posted above.
Did you notice that even though the USA exports more goods to Ukraine than the USA imports from Ukraine—I think the trade surplus in favor of the USA is something like $800million—Ukraine has now been hit by a new 10% tariff. Explain that one.
I had seen an entire article on the ridiculousness of that—a burdensome imposition on a struggling economy enduring a war with Russia—but just now verified it with the BBC:
Seriously???! Are you sure you understand the term ad rem? Smoot-Hawley was about a tariff war and a tariff war is exactly what this administration has started. If anyone is guilty of “ad rem”, it is your complaint that in 1930 the USA had an overall trade surplus while now it is an overall deficit. Irrelevant. It is a tariff war either way.
Oh my. In other words, it was about a tariff war (largely about other countries allegedly “taking advantage of the US” by sending to the USA agricultural and other products which damaged various U.S. economic sectors.)
I won’t even get into the ever-changing rationales which Trump has claimed for starting a tariff war. Initially he said it was about fentanyl coming into the USA, and then it was about unrestrained borders and a flood of illegals, and then it was “taking advantage of us for years”, and on and on and on.
I won’t pile on considering that others have already posted on this.
Seriously??? Rhetorical device? Pots and black kettles come to mind here.
I have much sympathy for Americans who are hurting because I come from anything but an elite background. (Midwestern hog farmer here before I became a university professor.) Blue-collar America has plenty of reasons to be angry at both political parties and the governing establishments. But that doesn’t make any of this administration’s nonsense and mass-destruction any less foolish or any less honest. Pathological lying has become the norm.
I see the MAGA true-believers not as bad people but as victims who have taken advantage of by the billionaire ELITES and their allies: Trump, Musk, and a cabinet of millionaires and billionaires. The elite rich will benefit from so much of what Trump is doing. The working class will suffer most. (Higher prices. Lost jobs. Lost government services. Lost aid to the disabled and disadvantaged.)
Reckless tariffs applied at hyper-speed will continue to cause nothing but chaos and pain. Carefully applied tariffs coupled with serious negotiation and gradual implementation are what history has taught us.
I had not previously heard the term MAGA Maoism but the parallels described here are sobering:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/04/08/maga-maoism-tariffs-trump/
I realize that only subscribers can read the entire article—but perhaps non-subscribers can read a few articles per month.
The article gave me flashbacks to the 1960’s when China ordered their best surgeons to become hospital janitors. Of course, public health plummeted (and most everything else) but the Cultural Revolution sure “put 'em in their place” those evil educated elites!
Thanks for all the interesting replies. So that it doesn’t get obscured in the flurry, the main thing I’m trying to highlight is that recent events have certainly exacerbated the dynamic that the OP pointed out, namely a broad distrust of what is viewed as an “expert class”. I would agree that this distrust isn’t reasonable when one is talking about something like flat Earth, where the science has been in place for millennia. Same for things like geocentrism, old Earth, evolutionary theory more broadly, and many other issues which have solidified over centuries. I grant that there is such a thing as “settled science”, areas where it’s not realistic to think that there is going to be some complete inversion of the scientific status quo.
And yet there is a dynamic at play which, broadly speaking, I’m not sure folks here necessarily see or acknowledge. The loss of confidence in the “expert class” isn’t just because folks downstream are trying to feel superior. It’s happened at least in part because, over the last few decades, there have been too many issues on which the implementation of “mainstream” expert conclusions caused some pretty significant downstream injury or harm, but then turned out to be not as well founded/grounded as originally pitched. There are lots of examples of this, but I think it reached a kind of crescendo in the monolithic official response to Covid-19. I hope to flesh that specific example out in some detail in a future post. For now, I would just say that it’s worth pondering why there has been such a significant loss of confidence and whether the scientific community at large may bear some responsibility for it. It’s very unfortunate that this distrust gets pressed to call into question areas of genuinely settled science, but I would argue that there’s certainly some ”there there” in terms of why folks are increasingly distrustful of the “expert class”.
I need to further digest the other replies and hope to engage with some of the specifics.
So you are saying that the masses are unhappy with the more educated, the more powerful (who run the government and much of the economy), and the more wealthy. Welcome to the last several thousand years of human history.
I’m astonished that none of us knew about this development. Thank you for bringing this to our attention. [Yeah, a wink-smile emoji should probably go here but I wince at the thought of actually using one. It’s just me. I’m always that way.]
Seriously, I doubt that anyone here is unaware how frustrated and angry millions of Americans are after revolving/dueling political parties trading leadership while often ignoring the harsh realities and needs of the masses. I share that frustration. Ridiculous hyper-speed tariff explosions (and mass firings of government workers and contracts) do nothing to alter the basic laws of economics which most people should have learned in high school. (In my day, these concepts were covered in American History class.) Yes, the billionaire elites are in the process of making the lives of most Americans more difficult than they have ever known—unless something major changes quickly to turn the crazy-bus around.
I did not see this as an attack, but as an interpretation that a MAGA is likely to think that way, which is not unreasonable.
Thank you, that’s how I intended it.
That’s not all I said. If “expert class” or “ruling elite” or fill-in-the-equivalent aren’t willing to examine why the masses might be pissed at them, perhaps even admit that there might be some good reasons for it, historically that’s tended to make things worse and not better. I’ll try to flesh that out with some specific examples in the near future.
Given the state of the media, I don’t think they even need to be good reasons.