Free Trade Has Hurt Global Labor Conditions. Trump’s Tariffs Won’t Help Them.
Corporations are likely to respond to the tariffs by further exploiting overseas workers to keep the profits flowing.
By Schuyler Mitchell ,
May 19, 2025
Cargo is loaded onto a lone container ship while the normally bustling berths sit empty due to a 35 percent plunge in volume following Trump's tariffs at the Port of Los Angeles on May 9, 2025, in Los Angeles, California.
Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
President Donald Trump is hardly an avatar for underconsumption. With a net worth of roughly $5 billion, the business mogul, crypto salesman and former reality TV star boasts a sprawling portfolio of lavish properties, private jets and luxury cars. But amid the tumultuous rollout of his sweeping tariff policy, Trump has had an unexpected message for U.S. consumers: buy less.
“Maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, you know? And maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally,” Trump said at an April cabinet meeting, referencing the potential impact of his tariffs on the global supply chain. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent echoed the president’s sentiment on Fox News this month, telling host Laura Ingraham that he’d reassure a little girl that fewer dolls was a price worth paying for her family’s “economic freedom.”
Many news outlets were quick to highlight the undeniable Grinchiness of a sitting president putting Barbie in his crosshairs. And with roughly 80 percent of the U.S. toy supply coming from China, the industry is slated to suffer major casualties in Trump’s trade war.
There was a bit of truth, however, to Trump’s “let them eat cake” moment: Americans, on average, buy too much stuff. The U.S. is the most wasteful country in the world, producing 12 percent of the world’s trash despite representing just 4 percent of the global population. More than 11 million tons of textile waste end up in landfills each year. One-click shopping and same-day delivery have fueled a clutter crisis. Such consumption habits harm not only the environment, but also human rights: Americans’ unfettered access to cheap goods is often made possible by the exploitation of workers in the Global South.
After receiving backlash for the economic incoherence of its trade policy, the Trump administration has coyly pitched tariffs as both a remedy to the overconsumption problem and a boon for working families: Things might cost more in the meantime, sure, but isn’t it good if we all buy less? The long game, according to Trump, is that the high international import taxes will encourage companies to reshore their operations, hire U.S. workers, and jumpstart a domestic manufacturing renaissance. Goods might still be more expensive after that — but at least then they’ll be U.S.-made.
But, unsurprisingly, this lofty vision has little ground in reality. Experts I spoke with all said that Trump’s tariffs are unlikely to create substantial gains for U.S. workers, nor will they remedy structural inequities in the global supply chain. In fact, evidence suggests they’ll disproportionately hurt low-income and working class families in the U.S., while worsening labor conditions for low-wage workers abroad.
“It’s a real myth that all these industries are going to come back to the U.S.,” said Sanchita Saxena, a faculty fellow at UC Berkeley’s Institute for Research on Labor and Employment who has studied human rights issues in global supply chains for more than 20 years. “The reality is these companies have seen the financial benefits of being able to cut costs the way they have for decades.” Even if Trump-imposed tariffs make production costs higher in one country, Saxena said companies will likely move operations to other countries where labor costs are still cheaper than in the U.S.
Still, Trump’s elimination of the de minimis exemption on Chinese imports could spark a change in U.S. consumption habits, particularly when it comes to fast fashion. For decades, this loophole has permitted shipments of low-cost goods below a certain total value threshold – including Chinese-manufactured garments, which make up a third of the world’s supply – to enter the U.S. tax-free. This has enabled “ultra-fast fashion” giants like Shein and Temu to sell mass quantities of extremely cheap goods to predominantly U.S.-based consumers. With exploitative business models that aim to meet every consumer need by placing small batches of rapid-turnaround orders to suppliers, Shein and Temu have come under scrutiny in recent years for child labor, forced labor and environmental degradation. Trump has taken aim at this exemption, too, and has raised tariffs on small packages from China to 30 percent – though rather than making an economic argument, the administration has claimed without evidence that China’s government is using the provision to smuggle fentanyl into the United States. With the de minimis loophole closing, a $5 bikini might become a thing of the past, and influencers in recent weeks have urged their U.S. audiences to see the change as an opportunity to buy less and with more intention.
But Saxena and Shelly Heald Han, executive vice president of the Fair Labor Association, both said that the chaotic and sudden implementation of Trump’s tariffs could degrade labor conditions, including by encouraging the types of rush orders that Shein and Temu are known for. Saxena noted that the fluctuating nature of the tariffs creates a sense of economic instability similar to the conditions created by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. What we saw then, and Saxena told me she expects to see now, is brands responding to that uncertainty by squeezing their suppliers in the Global South — cancelling orders, asking for severe discounts, or not placing them at all. This could result in factories laying off workers or slashing their already-low wages. “If you suddenly have a situation where there’s massive unemployment, the social and economic impact of that is huge,” Saxena said.
“Factories often may close, and they may close precipitously so that workers don’t have a chance to find other jobs. The factory owners may not pay the workers the severance that they’re owed,” said Han. On the flip side, Han noted that some companies have responded to the uncertainty by placing rush orders, which could force employees to work exorbitant hours beyond their normal workload.
In other words, wealthy corporations will respond to the tariffs by doing what they always do: prioritize profit. As Nicole Aschoff wrote in Jacobin in 2019, “The vast majority of gains from protectionism go to companies because they have the power to organize work and production. There is no mandate to channel profit gains from tariffs toward workers through the creation of new jobs or wage gains.” While Trump’s new “buy less” rhetoric may nod to a leftist critique of consumption, his economic policies are wholly uninterested in addressing the sustainability and human rights issues at the core of the global capitalist economy.
“The leaders of industry have never wanted to pay American workers so much that they could compensate for overproduction,” said Elizabeth McKillen, a labor historian at the University of Maine. “I think that so long as you still have capital, it’s going to be interested in moving plants where business is cheaper.” That’s not likely to be the United States.
Trump has frequently defended his policies by pointing to President William McKinley, who implemented high tariffs at the end of the 19th century. But McKillen emphasized that Trump’s framing lacks context. “This was an era of enormous poverty for most people, and yet what he takes out of that frame is that the McKinley tariffs made the country rich,” said McKillen. “Of course, they only did for a select few — and that was the robber baron class.”
Nevertheless, Trump has cloaked his tariffs in economically populist rhetoric, railing against the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) for causing a collapse in domestic manufacturing and casting the Democratic Party as anti-working class. Indeed, the bipartisan era of neoliberal globalization has been detrimental to the labor movement. As historian Erik Loomis wrote in Dissent in 2017, free trade agreements like NAFTA allowed corporations “to move around the globe in a never-ending search for cheaper labor.”
But Trump, of course, is not truly pro-worker. Shortly after taking office, he illegally fired officials on the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency tasked with safeguarding workers’ right to unionize. Now, Republicans are advancing a draft of a tax bill that would cut taxes for the rich and raise them on working people. McKillen noted that tariffs also amount to tax on the poor, because a disproportionate amount of low-income families’ income goes to buying basic products.
Still, tariffs need not be inherently negative — if done correctly. As Aschoff notes in her Jacobin piece, titled “We Need a Socialist Trade Policy,” unlike Trump, who focuses on trade through the lens of U.S. supremacy and foreign adversaries, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont “places the blame squarely on footloose multinational corporations and their ability to shop around for bargain-basement production costs.” He has called for the overhaul of global free trade agreements and the elimination of certain tax breaks and grants to companies that outsource jobs. Selective, targeted tariffs could be used to encourage higher labor standards in certain countries or foster the growth of specific sectors such as the semiconductor industry.
“It’s in the interest of American labor to raise labor standards throughout the world,” said McKillen. “It was one of the goals that the labor movement actually had from the time it came of age in the late-19th century: workers of the world unite.”
