There Is Nothing New About Trump’s Economic Populism – OpEd

Trump’s policies are not guided by a coherent philosophy; they form a transactional strategy that draws on tactics employed by earlier Republican leaders. All this makes clear that such interventionism is a legacy of the GOP itself—rather than an aberration within the American right—as many analysts wrongly claim.

April 16, 2026 
By MISES
By Lorenzo Cianti


The Supreme Court’s 6–3 decision invalidating Donald Trump’s emergency tariffs, followed almost immediately by the President’s response reinstating and increasing them, reminds us once again how rapidly American politics evolves. Yet, in some cases, it pays to recognize that certain underlying threads in government policy remain constant, regardless of the period or the leaders in charge.

Too often, so-called “experts” weigh in on current events without any real command of economic history. Consider the outrage among prominent Republicans over Trump’s bombastic campaign promises and what his detractors see as troubling moves after returning to office.

In a December 2025 op-ed for The New York Times, former presidential candidate Mitt Romney contended that tariffs “burden lower- and middle-income families,” pointing to analyses showing they act as a regressive tax that hits the poorest Americans hardest. Still, in the same piece, he echoed progressive rhetoric by calling for higher taxes on the rich, himself included. We have no intention of defending Trump here, but one neglected aspect deserves attention.

For decades, a persistent myth has held that the Reagan-era GOP heralded an age of unfettered laissez-faire capitalism, nudging the entire ideological spectrum toward pro-free trade, business-friendly positions. It thus became natural to portray Trump as an outlier in the Republican fold—an irritating, heterodox chapter in the story of a party that, on the surface at least, has long championed individual liberty and small government. The truth, however, is far more nuanced than the dominant narrative would have us believe.

To debunk this simplistic notion, we must dissect the most salient aspects of Trump’s platform and compare them with the GOP’s historical record.

Protectionism

Protectionism stands as the policy Trump touts most proudly, so much so that he has proclaimed himself “Tariff Man.” He went further still, calling “tariff” the most beautiful word in the English language.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the Republican Party emerged in the mid-1850s by inheriting Henry Clay’s “American System,” which formed the cornerstone of the Whigs’ agenda: leveraging the federal government to stabilize finance, protect and foster domestic industry, and build national infrastructure.

Whigs and early Republicans both favored higher tariffs not only to generate federal revenue, but also to safeguard and promote US manufacturers, with the goal of developing a more diversified, industrializing economy. As Lew Rockwell aptly noted in the introduction to Murray Rothbard’s For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto:


The Civil War, in addition to its unprecedented bloodshed and devastation, was used by the triumphal and virtually one–party Republican regime to drive through its statist, formerly Whig, program: national governmental power, protective tariff, subsidies to big business, inflationary paper money, resumed control of the federal government over banking, large–scale internal improvements, high excise taxes, and, during the war, conscription and an income tax.

The US House of Representatives passed the Morrill Tariff on the eve of Lincoln’s presidency. The measure sharply raised tariff rates on dutiable imports and widened the protectionist scope of federal policy. A subsequent adjustment soon pushed rates even higher.

The 1890 McKinley Tariff, named after then-Representative William McKinley, established the highest average tariff level in US history up to that time, with some rates surpassing 100 percent. The Fordney-McCumber Tariff of 1922, enacted under Warren Harding, produced substantial increases in a decade defined by isolationism and protectionist sentiment.

Yet it was the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, signed into law by Herbert Hoover, that delivered the most dramatic escalation of duties in American history to that point. This infamous measure lifted average tariff rates to approximately 60 percent—up from the Fordney-McCumber level of 38 percent—in an effort to shield domestic employment. The result was a cascade of retaliatory tariffs from trading partners around the world.


The Smoot-Hawley Act was a classic example of beggar–thy–neighbor policy, in which one country pursues its own national advantage at the direct expense of others. This zero-sum logic parallels the rationale behind Trump’s tariffs, as the following chart illustrates:

Source: PIIE, US Global Investors

Price Controls

On December 19, 2025, Trump announced nine new agreements with major pharmaceutical companies to lower prescription drug prices for American patients, bringing them in line with the lowest prices paid in other developed countries (known as most-favored-nation, or MFN, pricing). These voluntary deals lower costs for Medicaid programs and certain direct–to–consumer sales, building on earlier MFN efforts from his administration.

The best-known historical precedent came on August 15, 1971, when Richard Nixon declared a 90-day freeze on wages and prices as part of his New Economic Policy. That move aimed to combat runaway inflation and avert a currency crisis amid the collapse of the Bretton Woods system.

It was the first peacetime imposition of mandatory wage and price controls in US history, initially winning broad public support but then proving disastrous. Driven by stagflation and fears of a gold drain after the dollar’s convertibility ended, the inflation rate had climbed above 12 percent by 1974.

The program evolved through multiple phases, including the establishment of the Pay Board and Price Commission to oversee allowable increases. Artificially-suppressed prices quickly led to widespread shortages, most notably in gasoline and steel, with long lines at pumps and rationing conditions. Businesses, unable to cover costs, reduced output, cut quality, or were forced to shut down.

The controls disrupted market signals, prevented economic calculation, and failed to curb long–term inflation, contributing to distortions that lingered for years. Why should we believe similar interventions today would produce different results?

Tax Cuts

Through the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), Trump’s first term delivered the most significant federal tax overhaul since the 1980s.

This mirrors Ronald Reagan’s 1981 Economic Recovery Tax Act—which phased in a 25 percent across-the-board cut in individual rates (top marginal from 70 percent to 50 percent), accelerated depreciation, and inflation indexing—and the 1986 Tax Reform Act, which simplified brackets and dropped the top rate to 28 percent, but left overall revenue roughly intact due to offsets.

As Rothbard asserted in his critique of Reaganomics, these cuts were illusory and temporary in practice, offset by bracket creep, rising payroll taxes, stealth increases, and massive spending growth that ballooned the federal deficit without structural restraint. Although any tax cut should be welcome, in both cases, these were easily reversible measures that drove deficits higher because they were not accompanied by cuts to public spending and government departments.

Government Spending

The Republican embrace of expansive government spending under the banner of “compassionate conservatism” reached new heights during George W. Bush’s presidency.

In 2003, Bush signed Medicare Part D—a massive new entitlement program providing prescription drug benefits to seniors—with initial costs estimated at $400 billion over ten years, later revised upward to $534 billion. The voluntary benefit, administered through private insurers, represented a major expansion of federal involvement in healthcare, adding trillions to long-term liabilities without corresponding offsets.

Similarly, in October 2008, Bush enacted the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) as part of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, authorizing $700 billion (then capped at $475 billion) to bail out financial institutions by purchasing troubled assets, ultimately disbursing $443 billion with a net cost of $31 billion after recoveries.

These interventions underscored the GOP’s willingness to deploy federal resources during crises and foreshadow Trump’s own big-spending tendencies. Bush’s 2008 Economic Stimulus Act also provided $152 billion in rebate checks to over 130 million households, aimed at boosting spending amid the financial crisis.

That approach finds a counterpart in Trump’s 2020 CARES Act—a $2 trillion package that included $1,200 direct payments per adult as part of broader relief, though on a vastly larger scale (12 percent of GDP in 2020 versus 1 percent in 2008). Both initiatives sought rapid economic stimulus but prioritized short-term aid over fiscal restraint.

Conclusion

Trump’s policies are not guided by a coherent philosophy; they form a transactional strategy that draws on tactics employed by earlier Republican leaders. They are best understood as a somewhat disorganized, contradictory blend of neo-mercantilism, national populism, and old-school protectionism, rooted in the Whig program and traditional Republicanism.

Trumpism combines higher tariffs abroad with “fewer regulations” at home, folding in Nixon’s price controls, Reagan’s tax cuts, and Bush’s expansionary policies. All this makes clear that such interventionism is a legacy of the GOP itself—rather than an aberration within the American right—as many analysts wrongly claim.

About the author:

 Lorenzo Cianti is a student of Political Science and International Relations at Roma Tre University. Passionate about Austrian Economics and political philosophy, he is a regular contributor to L’Opinione delle Libertà—Italy’s oldest continuously published newspaper—and to the online magazine Atlantico Quotidiano. He was a finalist in the 2026 Kenneth Garschina Undergraduate Student Essay Contest for the essay “The Chainsaw Revolution: Javier Milei’s Rothbardian Assault on Argentine Collectivism.”

Source: This article was published by the Mises Institute

The Mises Institute, founded in 1982, teaches the scholarship of Austrian economics, freedom, and peace. The liberal intellectual tradition of Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) and Murray N. Rothbard (1926-1995) guides us. Accordingly, the Mises Institute seeks a profound and radical shift in the intellectual climate: away from statism and toward a private property order. The Mises Institute encourages critical historical research, and stands against political correctness.

Nobel Prize-winning economist pinpoints major flaw in Trump's 'nervous' Iran war ploy

Ewan Gleadow
April 1, 2026 
RAW STORY

FILE PHOTO: U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth looks on, as President Donald Trump delivers remarks, in the Oval Office at the White House, in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 21, 2025. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo

Donald Trump's plan for the war with Iran could cause even further trouble for taxpayers across the country, according to a Nobel Prize winner.

Paul Krugman has warned that the president's current task in Iran is to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Crude oil prices reached a staggering $100 a barrel earlier this week, and the veteran economist does not see the price improving any time soon. Even though the United States' own oil exporters profited from the Strait of Hormuz closure, Krugman claims there is no way this will help the average citizen.

Writing in his Substack, he explained, "Now, America produces a lot of oil, and the domestic oil industry will be earning large windfall profits even as U.S. consumers suffer. But so what?

"We don’t have any mechanism in place to capture and redistribute those windfall gains, so ordinary U.S. families will bear the full brunt of the global oil shock even though America is a net oil exporter."

"The Fed could, in principle, try to look through the effects of the Strait crisis on business costs as well as direct effects on consumer prices. But given how nervous everyone is about the risk of 70s-type stagflation, it probably won’t."

Krugman went on to suggest the reaction of the Federal Reserve could be a cause for concern. "There’s an additional, technical but important reason to be even more worried about soaring prices for diesel, jet fuel and industrial materials than about gasoline prices," he wrote. "It involves how the Federal Reserve is likely to react.

"The Fed normally bases its decisions about whether to reduce or increase interest rates on 'core' inflation — inflation excluding food and energy prices. The reason it does this is that food and energy prices are highly volatile and are usually a poor indicator of what inflation will be over the next few years."

"So the Fed tries to 'look through' inflation fluctuations driven mainly by the prices of groceries and gasoline. For example, it didn’t raise rates in 2011, when there was a temporary uptick in inflation driven entirely by oil prices."

Trump just earned an economic title he'll never brag about

Robert Reich
March 30, 2026 

RAW STORY


U.S. President Donald Trump walks as he heads to Marine One

 to travel to Ohio and Kentucky, from the White House in Washington, D.C.,

 U.S., March 11, 2026. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

Friends,

When he ran for president again in 2024, Trump made three promises to the American public:

(1) He said he’d “secure” the southern border. Most Americans now believe he’s gone too far in this.

(2) He’d avoid foreign wars. He said: “We’ve spent $8 trillion in the Middle East, and we’re not fixing our roads in this country? How stupid. How stupid is it? And we’re not fixing our highways, our tunnels, our bridges, our hospitals, even.” Umm. How well has this promise turned out?

(3) His third promise was to bring prices down and create more jobs. He said: “Starting on day one, we will end inflation and make America affordable again, to bring down the prices of all goods.”


In fact, Trump has pushed prices way up.


As of today, the price of Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil, is above $116 a barrel. The average price for a gallon of gas in the United States is now $4.00, and many people are paying far more. Food costs are also heading upward.

He’s also raised tariffs on imports. This has increased the prices of everything we buy from abroad.

He has also pledged to be “the greatest jobs president that God has ever created.”


But he’s been the worst jobs president in American history.

In his first term, Trump presided over a historic net loss of nearly 3 million jobs, the worst jobs numbers ever recorded under an American president.

So far in his second term, he has presided over a loss of 150,000 jobs. (By contrast, in the final 14 months of Joe Biden’s presidency, the economy added 1.74 million jobs.)


The only thing Trump has done to make any Americans better off is to cut taxes on the rich and big corporations. He did this in his second term. It was also his major economic policy in his first term (which he promised would result in $4,000 annual raises for everyone else. How did that work out? Did you get a $4,000 raise?)

May I speak plainly? Trump has turned the American economy into s---.Trump’s economic record is only slightly worse than that of every Republican president before him. Here’s the historic truth that everyone needs to understand: The American economy does worse under Republican presidents. Since 1933, the U.S. economy has grown nearly twice as fast on average under Democrats.

Wage growth slowed after Reagan’s tax cuts for the rich and big corporations. And the Bush and Trump tax cuts didn’t trickle down, either.


These giveaways to the wealthy have come at the expense of investments in infrastructure, education, and health care — making life more expensive and difficult for everyone who isn’t rich.

They’ve also exploded the debt and deficit.

Reagan oversaw a 186 percent increase in the national debt — the biggest percentage increase in over 70 years.


The Bush and Trump tax cuts — which mostly benefited corporations and the rich — are the main reasons why America’s debt continues to grow faster than the economy.

Look at the historic record and you see something else: Republican presidents have led us into the three worst economic crises of the last hundred years.

The Great Depression began in 1929 under Herbert Hoover. The Great Recession began in 2008 under George W. Bush. The pandemic recession of 2020 began under Trump.


Democrats (FDR, Obama, and Biden) led us out of these Republican economic crises.

Republicans talk about “running the country like a business.” Sure. They’ve run it the way Trump ran his businesses: with massive debts, a string of failures, and payouts for the folks at the top, while average workers get shafted again and again.

Given Republicans’ track record, why would any hardworking American put their financial security in the hands of a Republican president (or, for that matter, a Republican Congress) ever again?

Robert Reich is an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/. His new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org

Opinion - How President Trump ruined Christmas

John Mac Ghlionn, 

opinion contributor

THE HILL
Sat, December 20, 2025 



President Trump has weathered scandals, impeachments, investigations, electoral defeats, and enough lawsuits to make a mid-size law firm weep. But this winter, he’s facing something he can’t bluff or bark away: prices. Real prices. Grocery-store prices. The kind that glare at you from the receipt like a personal insult.

And Americans are tired of being insulted.

His approval rating has fallen to depths not seen since Nixon started sweating through his suits. Even Republicans are beginning to admit something is off. Strategists are panicking. Voters are grimacing. Nothing feels stable anymore, except the cost of groceries, which is now apparently welded to the price of rare minerals.

The moment the floor gave way came on Dec. 7, when Trump turned on “Fox & Friends,” his long-time emotional support animal, and found Peter Schiff calmly pointing out that Americans can’t afford much of anything right now. Schiff didn’t yell or blast the president. He simply stated the obvious: prices are rising, wages aren’t and Trump’s tariffs are making everything worse.

Trump’s response was instant and volcanic. He accused Schiff of being a “Trump-hating loser,” demanded producers be investigated, and suggested some unnamed force was infiltrating the network.

But no matter how many enemies he invents, voters know when they’re being squeezed. A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found only 26 percent of Americans think Trump is handling the cost of living well.

Even former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), who has defended every Republican president since the Bronze Age, has finally waved the red flag. Ignoring affordability, he warned, isn’t a strategy but political self-harm. You can yell “Fake news!” at a reporter. You can’t yell it at a supermarket shelf. As Gingrich put it, any Republican who denies the problem “is not listening to the American people.” Prices feel real because people feel them, and in a free country, perception becomes reality fast. When your voters decide groceries are unaffordable, no spin or late-night rant can drag them back into believing otherwise.

And the sting of rising prices is now paired with something even harder to ignore: Trump’s increasingly erratic behavior. When he’s not comparing female reporters to farm animals, he’s on Truth Social unloading a stream of consciousness that reads like a diary no one asked to see. He’s always been a ranter, of course, but the recent eruption didn’t register as a mere tantrum. It operated on an entirely different level. Hundreds of posts an hour. AI images. Conspiracy theories running around like mice in a grain silo. He accused Michelle Obama of controlling President Biden’s autopen. He suggested Canada was meddling in American elections. He claimed Democrats faked affordability statistics. He warned of shadowy enemies and imaginary plots. It was a kaleidoscope of fury, paranoia and capital letters.

And he did it in December, the one month Americans beg for a break. They want lights. Carols. Hot chocolate. They want to forget their overdrafts and pretend the economy isn’t hanging by a thread. They want peace on earth, or at least silence from their president at 3 a.m.

But instead, they got a man firing off posts like an overcaffeinated teenager locked in a basement with three routers and a grudge.

Christmas didn’t stand a chance.

Families are already tiptoeing around budgets. Four in ten say they’re cutting back. Six in ten say gifts for others are on the chopping block. This year, stockings across America will be filled not with gadgets or toys but with the one gift every politician hands out for free: disappointment.

Tariffs have turned holiday shopping into a form of financial stunt work. Small businesses are being squeezed so hard they now measure success by whether they can make it through one more import cycle without crying.

Take a fragile economy. Add a president broadcasting his own mental turbulence to millions. Mix in a month that demands emotional stability more than any other. The result is simple: Trump stepped on Christmas, barefoot, and shattered it.

John Mac Ghlionn is a writer and researcher who explores culture, society and the impact of technology on daily life.

Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved

Trump's 'refusal to face reality' on economic crisis shows his 'indifference': analysis

Ewan Gleadow
December 22, 2025 

RAW STORY


FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump holds an executive order about tariffs increase, flanked by U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 13, 2025. REUTERS/File Photo

Donald Trump has failed to face up to the reality of the cost of living crisis according to a political commentator who highlighted this "indifference".

John Casey suggested the president had failed to mark up the everyday problems facing the country this Christmas in an opinion piece for The Daily Beast. Casey claimed that Trump had flat out lied about prices falling when, in fact, they were on the rise. Trump's administration was compared to that of Herbert Hoover's "moral failure" in failing to adapt to The Great Depression

Casey wrote, "Herbert Hoover embodied the moral failure of inaction. When the Great Depression devastated the nation, he refused to treat widespread suffering as a call for federal intervention."

"The catastrophic results included soaring unemployment, hunger, disease, and death. Americans experienced what it means when their government refused responsibility for pain."

"Trump’s governing style reflects this refusal to face reality, with consequences stemming from deadlines passed and protections lapsed, with the indifferent refrain that 'things won’t be that bad.'"

"He dismisses warnings from job reports to inflation data as mere messaging problems and the reliable fallback of fake news. Economic hardship is challenged as a Democratic hoax, even as ordinary Americans struggle. Gas prices are down even when they are up."

These economic woes are starting to put strain on the MAGA faithful, according to Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman. Writing in his Substack newsletter, Krugman explained how Trump had inherited an economy that was in much better shape before he took office.

The Nobel Prize winner wrote, "Trump inherited when he took office was in much better shape than today’s economy, with lower unemployment combined with faster job growth, and inflation trending down."

"Trump’s radical policy changes – huge (illegal) tariffs, mass deportations, big tax cuts (for the rich), benefit cuts (for the poor and middle class), mass layoffs of federal workers, disinvesting in huge green energy projects and aid to farmers — have been clearly damaging to everything besides crypto and AI.

"It strains credulity – even for the Trump faithful – to claim that we are still in Joe Biden’s economy." Krugman went on to suggest Trump will try and "gaslight" Americans into believing the economy has been fixed.

He wrote, "Trump is going to make a prime-time address to the nation tonight. The details of his speech haven’t been announced, but it’s a good guess that he intends to gaslight Americans yet again, claiming that things are going well. They aren’t."

It’s Time for an All-Out Food Fight With Trump

How can ordinary grocery shoppers organize and become part of the movement that is endeavoring to protect society against Trump’s authoritarian juggernaut?


A customer shops for eggs in a Kroger grocery store in Houston, Texas.
(Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

Jeremy Brecher
Dec 14, 2025

Common Dreams

LONG READ


Hunger has a funny way of concentrating the attention.

The cost of food and cutbacks in the provision of food for those who need it have been drivers of mass protest throughout much of history:One of the events initiating the French Revolution was the Women’s March on Versailles, which began among women in the marketplaces of Paris protesting the high price and scarcity of bread. Their demonstrations quickly became intertwined with the activities of those who were seeking an end to autocracy and had just issued the Declaration of the Rights of Man.
The 2008 Egyptian general strike over rising food costs provided inspiration for the overthrow of Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak three years later.
In 2022 in Sri Lanka, rising food prices among other grievances led to protests that culminated in the overthrow of the ruling regime.

Recent months have seen the emergence of a powerful movement-based opposition to President Donald Trump and MAGA, manifested in the 7 million participants in No Kings Day and the unprecedented on-the-ground opposition to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and National Guard occupations of American cities. At the same time, the price of food for Americans of every class has soared: A survey this summer by the Associated Press and NORC found the cost of groceries has become a major source of stress for just over half of all Americans—outpacing rent, healthcare, and student debt.

What are sometimes belittled as “pocketbook issues” like the cost of food, housing, and medical care have become critical issues for a majority of Americans. So far, the hundreds of millions suffering from inflated prices have not found a way to organize themselves and fight back. Nor has the movement-based opposition taken up their cause. But a rarely remembered consumer boycott half a century ago indicates how such self-organization against high food prices might emerge.
“America’s Largest Protest”

Ann Giordano, 33, described herself as “just a housewife.” She recalled that she was never particularly conscious of food prices; her Staten Island kitchen didn’t have enough shelf space for her to buy in large quantities. But one day when she had put the groceries away there was still space left on the shelf. She vaguely wondered if she had left a bag of food at the store. Next time she came home from shopping, she looked in her wallet and concluded that she had accidentally left a $20 bill behind. When she went back to the supermarket and found out how much her food really cost, she suddenly realized where the shelf space had come from and where the money had gone.

It was early spring in 1973. Inflation was rising, food prices were soaring, and millions of shoppers nationwide were having similar experiences. Mrs. Giordano called some of her friends and discussed the idea of a consumer boycott—an idea that was springing up simultaneously in many places around the country in response to rising food prices. Soon a substantial network of women was calling homes all over Staten Island, spreading word of the boycott. They called a meeting at a local bowling alley to which over one hundred people came on two days’ notice. They named themselves JET-STOP (Joint Effort to Stop These Outrageous Prices) and elected captains for each district. Within a week they had covered the island with leaflets. picketed the major stores, and laid the basis for a highly effective boycott.

Mrs. Giordano and her friends were typical of those who gave birth to the 1973 consumer meat boycott, “a movement which started in a hundred different places all at once and that’s not led by anyone.” As a newspaper account described it:
The boycott is being organized principally at the grassroots level rather than by any overall committee or national leadership. It is made up mainly of groups of tenants in apartment buildings, neighbors who shop at the same markets in small towns, block associations, and—perhaps most typical—groups of women who meet every morning over coffee. All have been spurred into action by the common desire to bring food prices back to what they consider a manageable level.

The 1973 consumer meat boycott was undoubtedly the largest mass protest in American history. A Gallup poll taken at the end of the boycott found that over 25% of all consumers—representing families with 50 million members—had participated in it. Large retail and wholesale distributors reported their meat sales down by one-half to two-thirds. The boycott was strongest among what the press referred to as “middle income” families—those with incomes around the then-national average of $10,000 to $12,000 a year. It represented, in the words of one reporter, “an awareness that, for a whole new class of Americans like themselves, push has finally come to shove.”

In low-income neighborhoods, sales fell less during the boycott, largely because, as retailers pointed out, the residents, who couldn’t afford much meat at any time, had been cutting back for weeks due to high prices. As one Harlem merchant said, “How much can these people tighten their belts when they don’t have too much under their belts in the first place?”

Some advocates of the boycott made the dubious argument that it would bring meat prices down by reducing the demand for meat. Most participants, however, saw the movement as a protest, a way of communicating to politicians and others what they felt about the rising cost of living.

President Richard Nixon responded by putting a freeze on meat prices, but his move was met by scorn among many boycotters, who felt that prices were already far too high (“They locked the barn door after the cow went through the roof,” commented one housewife).
“We Ain’t Buying It!”

The meat boycott did not prove to be an effective tactic for combating high prices. Lacking a further strategy for meeting its participants’ needs and failing to hook up with the other mass insurgencies of the time, the movement soon lost momentum. Participants stopped coordinating their activity and returned to more individual strategies. But it did show the tremendous capacity of ordinary people to organize themselves on a massive national scale around issues of mutual concern—in this case the price of food.

Recent months have seen the emergence of the consumer boycott as a powerful vehicle for combating the Trump regime and undermining its “pillars of support.” Today’s boycotts are far more effectively targeted on specific institutions and realizable demands. For example, when the “Tesla Takedown” challenged Elon Musk’s role demolishing federal agencies and jobs, sales plunged and company stocks fell 13% in three months. A boycott campaign against Target initiated in January by the local Black community in Minneapolis over its reversal of its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies has now cut sharply into its sales, helping lead to its stock falling 33%, a $20 billion loss in shareholder value, and replacement of its CEO. When Disney took late-night host Jimmy Kimmel off the air over comments he made following the murder of Charlie Kirk in September, the Working Families Party helped put together a toolkit that explained how to cancel a Disney subscription. The Wall Street Journal reported that customers ditched Disney+ and Hulu at double the normal rates in September. Disney brought Kimmel back within days, and Hulu soon followed suit.

The 1973 meat boycott illustrates the way what are sometimes dismissed as “pocketbook issues” can be drivers of self-organization and massive outpourings of public discontent.

Today’s boycotts are also much better aligned with other forces. For example, in the days following Thanksgiving, major organizations that had backed the millions-strong national No Kings and MayDay2025 days of action, including Indivisible, 50501, and MayDayStrong, swung behind the boycotts of Target, Amazon, Home Depot, and other major corporations. Some national coordination was provided by a group that called itself “We Ain’t Buying It.”

This action is taking direct aim at Target, for caving to this administration’s biased attacks on DEI; Home Depot, for allowing and colluding with ICE to kidnap our neighbors on their properties; and Amazon, for funding this administration to secure their own corporate tax cuts.

These groups and many others are backing the boycott in support of striking Starbuck’s workers under the slogan, “No contract, no coffee!”

Like the Tesla Takedowns, these boycotts are coordinated with and often spearheaded by demonstrations and other forms of direct action at physical locations. And they are finding ways to stimulate other forms of pressure on their targets: The Amazon protest group Athenaforall, for example, is encouraging local groups to demand an end to local contracts with Amazon, permission for Amazon expansions, and public subsidies for Amazon.

Today’s boycott actions are better targeted and better allied than the 1973 meat boycott, but so far, they have not drawn in much of the population that is directly harmed by Trump and his corporate backers. The 1973 meat boycott shows that pocketbook issues, such as inflation and most notably food prices, can be a basis for self-organization and action beyond the electoral arena among the wide swath of people they affect.

The 1973 meat boycott illustrates the way what are sometimes dismissed as “pocketbook issues” can be drivers of self-organization and massive outpourings of public discontent. Such examples from the past are unlikely to provide us the specific programs or tactics we need to meet today’s food crises. But they do demonstrate the power that people can mobilize when they are driven by food deprivation.

Food Facts

The US currently has two overlapping food crises. One is the elimination of food programs for the poor. According to the Center for American Progress:
Project 2025 and the Republican Study Committee budget envisioned a transformative dismantling of federal nutrition assistance programs. In January, the Trump administration chaotically froze federal funding, leaving farmers reeling and nonprofits serving the needy worrying about steady access to support from SNAP and Meals on Wheels. In March, the administration cut more than $1 billion of funding from two programs that supply schools and food banks with food from local farms and ranches. These cuts affected schoolchildren and small farmers in all 50 states.

Despite the end of the government shutdown, millions face cutoff of food assistance right now. The GOP’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” passed earlier this year, cuts SNAP by roughly 20%. The cuts may affect people in every state. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the addition of new work requirements alone will cause 2.4 million people to lose benefits in an average month.

There is also another food crisis that affects everyone—poor and less poor—the fast-rising cost of food.

As you may have noticed, the price of food in American supermarkets has soared. As surveys indicate, the cost of groceries has become a major source of stress for American consumers.

Many consumers compare food prices now to five years ago. According to the Department of Agriculture, five years ago the average cost of groceries for a family of two working adults and two children ranged between $613 and $1,500 per month. In 2025, such a family is spending between $1,000 and $1,600 per month at the grocery store.

Food prices have continued rising through Trump’s presidency. In September 2025, banana prices were up 7% from a year before, ground beef had risen 13%, and roasted coffee rose 19%, according to the most recent Consumer Price Index (CPI) data available. (At that point the Trump administration stopped releasing CPI data—perhaps on the theory that no news is good news, or that what you don’t know won’t starve you.) As of September, the average cost of a pound of ground beef was $6.30, according to Federal Reserve data—the highest since the Department of Labor started tracking beef prices in the 1980s and 65% higher than in late 2019. The average retail price of ground roast coffee reached a record high of $9.14 per pound in September, more than twice the price in December 2019 when a pound of ground coffee cost just over $4.

Discontent over inflation was a principal cause of Trump’s 2024 election victory. It was also a principal cause of the Republican rout in 2025. But there is little public confidence that either Democrats or Republicans will rectify it. And neither has much in the way of a program to fix it—beyond each blaming the other.

The Fight for Food

In the 1973 meat boycott, households with 50 million members found a way to protest high food prices without waiting for elections. Today, the hundreds of millions of victims of exorbitant food prices may be enraged, but they have not yet found a way to organize themselves and fight back. Nor has the movement-based opposition that has challenged Trump’s galloping autocracy yet found a way to address food and other affordability issues. Food deprivation presents an opportunity for the movement to defend society against Trump’s depredations to bring a new front—and a new constituency—into that struggle.

While food inflation has multiple causes, our current food crises are in considerable part a result of actions by Trump and MAGA’s would-be autocracy. For example, Trump’s tariffs, a significant cause of rising food prices, represent an unconstitutional usurpation of the exclusive authority of the legislative branch to levy taxes. The violent attacks by ICE on immigrant workers—especially on farm workers—have driven workers from the fields, leading to farm labor shortages and rising food prices. And of course the cuts in SNAP and other food support programs make food immensely more expensive for tens of millions of people. While long-term solutions to food prices and food security will require major reforms in agricultural and other policies, reversing Trump’s tariff, anti-immigrant, and anti-SNAP policies could help a lot right now.

The anti-autocracy movement has the opportunity to raise the issues of food and other consumer prices as a fundamental part of the way MAGA autocracy is hurting ordinary people. The message can be: The destruction of democracy is hurting you. This can open a way to the convergence of “pocketbook” concerns and the “No Kings” struggle for democracy. The movement-based opposition can serve as an ally to help people organize themselves and fight for themselves—as households with 50 million members did in the 1973 meat boycott.

While food inflation has multiple causes, our current food crises are in considerable part a result of actions by Trump and MAGA’s would-be autocracy.

The 1973 meat boycott grew out of the daily life conditions of millions of people; mass response to today’s food crises will similarly depend on the experiences, feelings, reflections, discussions, and above all experimental action of those suffering their consequences. But one of the limits on the meat boycott’s success was the difficulty it had formulating concrete demands and a program which could actually realize its objectives. Today, there are proposals “in the wind” to bring down food prices that are well worth discussing and testing. They include:

End all tariffs on food: Trump’s tariffs contribute significantly to the high cost of meat, coffee, bananas, and other groceries—tariffs on Brazilian beef imports are more than 75%, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation. Whatever the Supreme Court decides about current challenges to the constitutionality of Trump’s tariff programs, he will almost certainly try to continue his tariff powers using different legal justifications—and the impact on consumers will continue. Yet his recent reduction of some tariffs on food shows how politically vulnerable he is on this issue—and indicates that pressure could force even more reductions.

The Yale Budget Lab recently estimated that tariffs will cost households almost $2,400 a year. In a recent poll, three-quarters said their regular monthly household costs have increased by at least $100 a month from last year. Respondents identified the tariffs as the second biggest threat to the economy. Only 22% supported Trump’s tariffs. A demand to end all tariffs on food might win quick and massive support—and find allies among the public officials and corporate leaders who are turning against Trump’s tariffs. Sen. Jacky Rosen of Nevada recently introduced the No Tariffs on Groceries Act, saying, “Donald Trump lied to the American people when he promised to bring prices down ‘on day one.’ His reckless tariffs have done the opposite, raising grocery costs and making it harder for hardworking families to put food on the table.”

Restore all food programs: The hunger-producing cuts in nutrition programs like SNAP are immensely unpopular. In October, Republican Senator Josh Hawley, of all people, introduced two bills to reinstate Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits and critical farm programs during the government shutdown. Despite the end of the government shutdown, cuts in SNAP and other nutrition programs are burgeoning. A campaign to cancel all cuts in all food programs would have wide popular support and could be spearheaded by those who have lost or will lose their benefits. Legislation to do so was introduced in Congress in late November.

Provide free school meals: Free school lunch programs represent a widely accepted form of support for all families—without demeaning means tests. In Colorado voters just passed statewide ballot measures which would raise $95 million annually for school meals by limiting deductions for high income taxpayers. The measures will support Healthy School Meals for All, a state program that provides free breakfast and lunch to all students regardless of their family’s income level. Excess receipts can be used to compensate for the loss of federal SNAP funds. Nine states and many cities already provide free meals for all students. Such programs can directly reduce the money families have to pay for food.

Expand SNAP to all who need it: A proposal by food insecurity expert Craig Gunderson would provide SNAP benefits to all those with incomes up to 400% of the poverty line. If benefits were also expanded by roughly 25%, it would reduce food insecurity by more than 98% at a cost of $564.5 billion. While such a program is not likely to be instituted all at once, the demand to expand SNAP eligibility could win wide popular support and directly benefit tens of millions of people. According to Gunderson, states can and have set higher eligibility thresholds of up to 200% of the poverty line. Given the wide public outrage over the soaring wealth of the wealthy, surely a tax on high-income people to pay for such a program could win popular support.

Support community gardens, local farms, and food mutual aid: The Trump administration has eliminated two programs that provided schools and food banks $1 billion to buy food from local farms. This has directly impacted food banks, schools, and farmers by cutting off a key market for local produce and reducing the amount of fresh food available to those in need. People don’t have to wait for government programs to start growing their own food to fight hunger—in fact, they are doing so already, for example, through community gardens. But state and municipal programs can provide essential support for expanding these efforts.

Open public grocery stores: New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has proposed a network of city-owned grocery stores focused on keeping prices low, rather than on making a profit. They would buy and sell at wholesale prices, centralize warehousing and distribution, and partner with local neighborhoods on products and sourcing.

“Don’t Starve—Fight”

Historically it has often been hard to find the levers of power to affect food prices. The 1973 meat boycott was powerful enough to bring about token action by President Richard Nixon. But it was unable to parlay participation by families with 50 million members into an effective way to reduce food prices. Around the world food riots have often been more successful in bringing down governments than in bringing down the price of food.

Targeted boycotts have recently proved effective where they could seriously affect a powerful target—witness the Tesla Takedown causing Elon Musk to withdraw from his DOGE disaster and Disney’s rapid rehiring of Jimmy Kimmel. Targets might include food companies that have supported Trump.

Today’s boycotts are highly effective at generating new and creative tactics: Consider the anti-ICE activists in Los Angeles, Charlotte, and elsewhere who swelled long lines to buy 17-cent ice scrapers, then again swelled long lines to return them—to send a message to Home Depot “to scrape ICE out of their stores.”

A movement against the failure to bring down high food prices could be a natural ally for the emerging movement to defend society against Trump and MAGA.

Boycotts are only one vehicle that could be used for food protests. Local demonstrations and “hunger marches” can be vehicles for dramatizing the issue and mobilizing people around it. Food banks, unions, churches, and other local institutions are in a strong position to initiate such actions. There is no way to know in advance what actions will achieve traction, but that is a good reason to start “testing the waters.”

Under public pressure, many states are stepping up to replace SNAP funding to compensate for federal cuts. A special session of the New Mexico legislature, for example, authorized $20 million weekly to provide state nutrition assistance benefits to the 460,000 New Mexicans who rely on SNAP.

But states will only be able to fill in for the federal government for a limited period of time. The New Mexico program, for example, only provides funding through the week of January, 19, 2026. At some point, even Republican governors and legislators may well begin demanding “re-federalization” of food programs.

Such a dynamic can be seen in the federalization of relief in the early days of the Great Depression. The entire American establishment, led by President Herbert Hoover, abhorred the idea of federal help for the poor and hungry, maintaining it was exclusively the responsibility of local governments and charities. But “hunger strikes” and other protests, often under the slogan “Don’t Starve—Fight!” created disruption and fear of social upheaval. In response, many cities and states created emergency relief programs, but soon many of them were on the verge of bankruptcy. Once-conservative city and state leaders began trooping to Washington to ask for federal support. As Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven put it, “Driven by the protests of the masses of unemployed and the threat of financial ruin, mayors of the biggest cities of the United States, joined by business and banking leaders, had become lobbyists for the poor.”

Under such pressure, the Hoover administration developed a program of loans to states to pay for relief programs. With the coming of the New Deal, this became an enormously expanded program of federal grants. The New Deal also began to buy surplus commodities from farmers and distribute them to families with low income.

While the details are different, this basic dynamic of pressure from people to cities and states to the federal government is still relevant today. Pressure to expand local and state programs is not an alternative to federal programs, but a step to forcing their expansion.

One weakness of the 1973 meat boycott was its isolation from the other burgeoning movements of the time, including the civil rights movement; the movement against the Vietnam War; and the large-scale wave of strikes, many of them wildcats. This made it less powerful than it otherwise might have been. A food movement today would have the opportunity for powerful alliances. Like consumers, farmers are being devastated by Trump’s tariffs and would benefit from expanded food programs. Like food consumers, farmers are also being hurt by the ICE policies driving farm workers away from the fields.

Food inflation might seem to be a middle-class issue, but poor people spend a substantially higher proportion of their total income on food, so rising food prices affect them even more. In 2023, the fifth of the population with the lowest incomes spent nearly 33% of their income on food; the highest-income fifth spent barely 8%. The rising cost of food means the poor can buy even less with whatever small funds they have. So low-income and better-off food consumers are natural allies.

High food prices were an important reason for Donald Trump’s election; he promised to reduce prices on “day one” of his presidency. Spooked by rising consumer anger at high food prices, on December 6 Trump established two task forces to investigate “whether anti-competitive behavior, especially by foreign-controlled companies, increases the cost of living for Americans.” An accompanying fact sheet stated, “President Trump is fighting every day to reverse Biden’s inflation crisis and bring down sky-high grocery prices—and he will not rest until every American feels the relief at the checkout line.” The task forces are instructed to report their findings to Congress within 180 days and present recommendations for congressional action within a year.

A movement against the failure to bring down high food prices could be a natural ally for the emerging movement to defend society against Trump and MAGA—what I have called “Social Self-Defense.” Conversely, the emerging movement-based opposition to Trump and MAGA has everything to gain by encouraging the development of a movement that allows millions of people to fight, not starve.


Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.


Jeremy Brecher
Jeremy Brecher is a historian, author, and co-founder of the Labor Network for Sustainability. His book, "Climate Insurgency: A Strategy for Survival," or free download at his personal website. His other books include: "Save the Humans? Common Preservation in Action" (2020), "Strike!" (2020), and, co-edited with Brendan Smith and Jill Cutler, "In the Name of Democracy: American War Crimes in Iraq and Beyond" (Metropolitan/Holt).
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George Carlin’s Obedient America

Robert Hunziker

 December 12, 2025

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“They want obedient workers. Obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it, and now they’re coming for your Social Security money.” (George Carlin, American stand-up comedian, 1937-2008)

According to Stanley Milgram (1933-1984), the controversial social psychologist who conducted experiments on obedience in the 1960s at Yale: “Obedience is as basic an element in the structure of social life as one can point to.” (more on this study to follow)

Currently in America, a very dark brand of obedience serves to confirm the sarcasm George Carlin leveled at America’s socio/economic system which takes advantage of a complaisant public, and when this obedient public does not exert sufficient pressure on political leaders, it grants “silent permission” to avoid or radicalize crucial issues such as climate change, uniform tax policy, proper medical treatment, and fair societal policies.

This darkness transfers control by allowing extreme divisive rhetoric to become normalized, in power, in control. Then political dialogue easily shifts to extremism, a very effective tool of control, marginalizing minority groups, intensifying social divisions. This is how societies and ecosystems go “extinct from politeness,” a term coined by Caitlin Johnstone. journalist, essayist, painter and poet: Faces Of The Empire: The Battle For Humanity’s Soul (November 2025)

Caitlin Johnstone recently posted an article: On Becoming The First Species To Go Extinct From Politeness, which goes straight to the heart of today’s nonsensicalness getting away with murder of every type and stripe while clobbering life-sourcing ecosystems without a care in the world. The simple explanation for mean-spiritedness getting away with mountains of ridiculousness is “American Obedience.” People seem to embrace being led around by their noses to the end of the Earth, to a certain demise, to utter destruction, to cold-bloodied murder, to Wile E Coyote’s edge of the cliff. This type of human tragedy is found in Jesus’ teachings, Matthew 15:14 and Luke 6:39: “If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.”

Caitlin’s article captures the essence of Jesus’ teachings by pointing the guitar strumming finger of the famous poet, folk-songster and celebrated labor advocate Utah Phillips (1935-2008) who exclaimed: “The Earth is not dying, it is being killed. And the people who are killing it have names and addresses.” The relevance of Phillips in today’s world could not be more apropos.

Caitlin quotes Howard Zinn (A People’s History of the United States): “As soon as you say the topic is civil disobedience, you are saying our problem is civil disobedience. That is not our problem…. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem.”

According to Stanley Milgram (1933-1984) the controversial social psychologist who conducted experiments on obedience in the 1960s at Yale: “Obedience is as basic an element in the structure of social life as one can point to… The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous import, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects’ strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects’ ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.” (Stanley Milgram, The Perils of Obedience, physics.utah.edu, The University of Utah)

Lying Creates a Kind of Trickle-Down Corruption

This infestation of dark obedience prevails even as nearly seventy-five percent (75%) of people in a Gallup poll that identify with either of America’s political parties agree that moral values are getting worse. This is a strong signal that something is deeply wrong. “The problem begins with the government and the media. The problem is not that we feel like morality is in decline by our fellow citizens but by our government and media. When the government and the media lie to us or share information that doesn’t align with our experience, it feels like honesty and integrity for America as a whole are eroding. Perhaps President Herbert Hoover said it best back in the 1930s when he observed, ‘When there is a lack of honor in government, the morals of the whole people are poisoned.’ Lying creates a kind of trickle-down corruption and the average citizen’s reasoning can quickly become: “If the government can, then why can’t I?”” (Is Morality in Decline or Is It Being Manipulated? Psychology Today)

The question remains: Why are today’s descendants of the original disobedient American revolutionaries of the late 18^th century so obedient, especially in the face of misdeeds, theft, graft, con artists, swindlers, and crooks at an all-time high? Do they idolize the original American Revolutionaries, the Founders who were wealthy landowners/slaveowners disobedient to monarchial rights while ignoring true democratic spirits. The early American Revolutionary era (1765-1783) established an extraordinarily narrow focus, only extending rights to white property-owning men, excluding women, slaves and non-property owners or pretty much everybody else. Democracy? “That’s our history. We were founded on a very basic double standard: This country was founded by slave owners who wanted to be free!” (George Carlin)

The Founders did not trust democracy. They reveled in oligarchical democracy, creating government structures designed to limit direct democracy, e.g., the Electoral College. It was a narrow interpretation of democracy, e.g., as for “religious freedom,” Catholics were denied rights like holding public office, voting, owning land and freely practicing their faith, some laws banned priests. Based upon the morality and ideals of the Founding Fathers, the DNA of American democracy is fragile and vulnerable to returning to oligarchical democracy. The 2000 and 2024 presidential elections demonstrated a fatal weakness inherent with mindless public obedience. All of which is only possible in the context of an “obedient society,” both then and now.

America has returned to its origins, with oligarchical democracy anxiously waiting in the wings, with taxes once again a pivot point, recalling the Boston Tea Party of 1773 led by some of the richest men in the colonies like John Hancock and Joseh Warren opposed to any form of taxation like today’s Big Beautiful Bill roundly accepted by smiling billionaires with clandestine tipping, accepted by obedient millionaire members of Congress and an obedient unwitting public from coast-to-coast, nobody stood up against it, nobody stood up, even as it buries America in a mountain of $3.4 trillion in new decadal debt. Moreover, with obedience so pervasive, all of Project2025 is easily enacted, smooth as silk, in a heady return to oligarchical democracy, as warned by Milgram: “The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority.” Project2025 proved to be that authority, nobody questioned, nobody challenged it, nobody!

Like a mindless drunkard wobbling down the street, American Obedience has given free rein to Project2025’s massive quiver filled with poisoned arrows aimed at complete destruction of a tenuous democracy and wholesale avoidance of enormously destructive climate systems directly caused by burning fossil fuels that are, in fact, encouraged; consequently, targeting the last remaining hope, i.e., a fair democratic system, of easily led obedient adults that have reduced themselves to sittin’ ducks. Who’s proud of this?

Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com