'Batsh*t Crazy' Trump Tariffs Should Be Seen as $7,000 Tax Hike on Workers, Says Economist

Instead of strategically imposing tariffs, Trump has chosen to "give the country the most massive tax increase in its history, possibly exceeding $1 trillion on an annual basis."


Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange during morning trading on April 3, 2025 in New York City.
(Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

Jessica Corbett
Apr 03, 2025
COMMON DREAMS


As stocks "nosedived" on Thursday, economists, policymakers, and campaigners around the world continued to warn about the impacts of U.S. President Donald Trump's trade war, which includes a 10% universal tariff for imports and steeper duties—that he claims are "reciprocal"—for dozens of countries, set to take effect over the next week.

"This is how you sabotage the world's economic engine while claiming to supercharge it," wrote Nigel Green, CEO of the international financial consultancy deVere Group. "Trump is blowing up the post-war system that made the U.S. and the world more prosperous, and he's doing it with reckless confidence."

As Bloombergdetailed after the president's "Liberation Day" remarks from the White House Rose Garden:
China's cumulative tariff rate of 54% includes both the 20% duty already charged earlier this year, added to the 34% levy calculated as part of Trump's so-called reciprocal plan, according to people familiar with the matter. The European Union's rate is 20% and Vietnam's is 46%, White House documents showed. Other nations slapped with larger tariffs include Japan with 24%, South Korea with 25%, India with 26%, Cambodia with 49%, and Taiwan with 32%.

In Europe on Thursday, "the regional Stoxx 600 index provisionally ended down around 2.7%," while "the U.K.'s FTSE 100 was down 1.6%, with France's CAC 40 and Germany's DAX posting deeper losses of 3.3% and 3.1%, respectively," according toCNBC.

In the United States, CNBCreported, "the broad market index dropped 4%, putting it on track for its worst day since September 2022. The Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled 1,200 points, or 3%, while the Nasdaq Composite fell 5%. The slide across equities was broad, with decliners at the New York Stock Exchange outnumbering advancers by 6-to-1."



However, as Economic Policy Institute (EPI) chief economist Josh Bivens noted last week, "because most households depend overwhelmingly on wages from work as their primary source of income and not returns from wealth-holding, the stock market tells us nothing about these households' economic situations."

And Trump's tariffs are expected to hit U.S. households hard, as the cost of his taxes on imports are passed on to consumers.

"Tariffs can be a legitimate and useful tool in industrial policy for well-defined strategic goals, but broad-based tariffs that significantly raise the average effective tariff rate in the United States are unwise," Bivens and EPI senior economist Adam Hersh stressed in a Thursday statement—which also called out Trump for mischaracterizing one of the think tank's 2022 analyses.

"Further, the second Trump administration's rationale, parameters, and timeline for tariffs have been ever-shifting," Bivens and Hersh continued. "As the original post cited by the administration argues, tariffs should not be a goal unto themselves, but a strategic tool to pair with other efforts to restore American competitiveness in narrowly targeted industrial sectors."

Instead of strategically imposing tariffs, Trump has chosen to "give the country the most massive tax increase in its history, possibly exceeding $1 trillion on an annual basis, which comes to $7,000 per household," warned Center for Economic and Policy Research co-founder and senior economist Dean Baker. "And this tax hike will primarily hit moderate and middle-income families. Trump's taxes go easy on the rich, who spend a smaller share of their income on imported goods."

Baker—like various other economists and journalists—also took aim at Trump's claims that the tariffs are reciprocal, explaining:
Trump's team calculated our trade deficit with each country and divided it by their exports to the United States. Trump decided that this figure was equal to that country's tariff on goods imported from the U.S.

Trump's method of calculating tariffs is comparable to the doctor who assesses your proper weight by dividing your height by your birthday. Any doctor who did this is clearly batshit crazy, and unfortunately so is our president. And apparently none of his economic advisers has the courage and integrity to set him straight or to resign.

However, outside Trump's administration, the intense criticism continued to mount, including from groups focused on combating the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency, which also endangers the global economy.

Andreas Sieber, associate director of policy and Campaigns at 350.org, said Thursday that "Trump's tariffs won't slow the global energy transition—they'll only hurt ordinary people, particularly Americans."

"Despite his claims he 'gets' economic policy, his record tells a different story: Tariffs are tanking U.S. stocks and fueling inflation," Sieber added. "The transition to renewables is unstoppable, with or without him. His latest move does little to impact the booming clean energy market but will isolate the U.S. and drive up costs for American consumers."

Allie Rosenbluth, U.S. campaign manager at Oil Change International, similarly emphasized that "Trump's tariffs will hurt working families first and foremost, raising costs for essentials we depend on and threatening to plunge the U.S. economy into a recession. Though Trump pretends to care about the cost of living for ordinary people, his real loyalties lie with his fossil fuel industry donors."

"If he actually cared about energy affordability, he would stop bullying other countries into buying more U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG), which boosts the fossil fuel industry's profits, but results in increased prices for domestic consumers and pushes us further toward climate catastrophe," she asserted. "The one step countries can take to hit Trump where it hurts most is wean off their dependency on fossil fuels from the United States."



The impact of Trump's new levies won't be limited to working-class people in the United States. Nick Dearden, director of U.K.-based Global Justice Now, pointed out that "Trump has set light to the global economy and unleashed a world of pain, not least on a group of developing countries that will suffer tremendous impoverishment as a result of his punitive tariffs."

"All those affected must come together and stand up to this bully by building a very different international economy that promotes the interests of ordinary people rather than the oligarchs standing behind Trump," he argued. "For all its scraping and crawling, the U.K. got no special treatment here, and the government should learn this lesson fast: They need to stop giving away our rights and protections in a futile effort to appease Donald Trump."

Leaders in the United States are also encouraging resistance to Trump. U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said Wednesday that "this week you will read many confused economists and political pundits who won't understand how the tariffs make economic sense. That's because they don't. They aren't designed as economic policy. The tariffs are simply a new, super dangerous political tool."

Murphy made the case that "the tariffs are DESIGNED to create economic hardship. Why? So that Trump has a straight face rationale for releasing them, business by business or industry by industry. As he adjusts or grants relief, it's a win-win: the economy improves and dissent disappears."

"But as long as we see this clearly, we can stop him. Public mobilization is working. Today, a few Republicans joined Democrats to vote against one set of tariffs," he added, referring to a resolution that would undo levies on Canadian imports. "The people still have the power."

Trump's Absurd Trade Policies Will Impoverish Americans and Harm the World

America’s trade deficit is a measure of the profligacy of America’s corporate ruling class, more specifically the result of chronically large budget deficits resulting from tax cuts for the rich combined with trillions of dollars wasted on useless wars.


U.S. President Donald Trump signs an executive order alongside right-wing musician Kid Rock in the Oval Office of the White House on March 31, 2025.
(Photo by Saul Loeb / AFP via Getty Images)

Jeffrey D. Sachs
Apr 02, 2025

Common Dreams

U.S. President Donald Trump is trashing the world trade system over a basic economic fallacy. He wrongly claims that America’s trade deficit is caused by the rest of the world ripping off the U.S., repeatedly stating things such as, "Over the decades, they ripped us off like no country has never been ripped off in history…”

Trump aims to close the trade deficit by imposing tariffs, thereby impeding imports and restoring trade balance (or inducing other countries to end their rip-offs of America). Yet Trump’s tariffs will not close the trade deficit but will instead impoverish Americans and harm the rest of the world.

A country’s trade deficit (or more precisely, its current account deficit) does not indicate unfair trade practices by the surplus countries. It indicates something completely different. A current account deficit signifies that the deficit country is spending more than it is producing. Equivalently, it is saving less than it is investing.

America’s trade deficit is a measure of the profligacy of America’s corporate ruling class, more specifically the result of chronically large budget deficits resulting from tax cuts for the rich combined with trillions of dollars wasted on useless wars. The deficits are not the perfidy of Canada, Mexico, and other countries that sell more to the U.S. than the U.S. sells to them.

Trump blames the rest of the world for America’s deficit, but that’s absurd. It is America that is spending more than it earns.

To close the trade deficit, the U.S. should close the budget deficit. Putting on tariffs will raise prices (such as for automobiles) but not close the trade or budget deficit, especially since Trump plans to offset tariff revenues with vastly larger tax cuts for his rich donors. Moreover, as Trump raises tariffs, the U.S. will face counter-tariffs that will directly impede U.S. exports. The result will be lose-lose for the U.S. and the rest of the world.

Let’s look at the numbers. In 2024, the U.S. exported $4.8 trillion in goods and services, and imported $5.9 trillion of goods and services, leading to a current account deficit of $1.1 trillion. That $1.1 trillion deficit is the difference between America’s total spending in 2024 ($30.1 trillion) and America’s national income ($29.0 trillion). America spends more than it earns and borrows the difference from the rest of the world.

Trump blames the rest of the world for America’s deficit, but that’s absurd. It is America that is spending more than it earns. Consider this. If you are an employee, you run a current account surplus with your employer and a deficit with the companies from which you buy goods and services. If you spend exactly what you earn, you are in current account balance. Suppose that you go on a shopping binge, spending more than your earnings by running up credit-card debt. You will now be running a current account deficit. Are the shops ripping you off, or is your profligacy driving you into debt?

Tariffs will not close the trade deficit so long as the fiscal irresponsibility of the corporate raiders and tax evaders that dominate Washington continues. Suppose, for example, that Trump’s tariffs slash the imports of automobiles and other goods from abroad. Americans will then buy U.S.-produced cars and other merchandise that would have been exported. Imports will fall, but so too will exports. Moreover, new tariffs imposed by other countries in response to Trump’s tariffs will reinforce the decline in U.S. exports. The U.S. trade imbalance will remain.

While the tariffs will not eliminate the trade deficit, they will force Americans to buy high-priced U.S.-produced goods that could have obtained at lower cost from foreign producers. The tariffs will squander what economists call the gains from trade: the ability to buy goods based on the comparative advantage of domestic and foreign producers.

The budget deficit is not due to the salaries of civil servants, who are being wantonly fired, or to the government’s R&D spending, on which our future prosperity depends, but rather to the combination of tax cuts for the rich, and reckless spending on America’s perpetual wars...

The tariffs will raise prices for automobiles and wages of automotive workers, but those wage hikes will be paid by lower living standards of Americans across the economy, not by a boost of national income. The real way to support American workers is through federal measures opposite to those favored by Trump, including universal health coverage, support for unionization, and budget support for modern infrastructure, including green energy, all financed with higher, not lower, taxes on the wealthiest Americans and corporate sector.

The federal government does not cover its overall spending with tax revenues because wealthy campaign donors promote tax cuts, tax avoidance (through tax havens) and tax evasion. Remember that DOGE has gutted the audit capacity of the IRS. The budget deficit is currently around $2 trillion dollars, or roughly 6 percent of U.S. national income. With a chronically high budget gap, the U.S. trade balance will remain in chronic deficit.

Trump says that he will cut the budget deficit by slashing waste and abuse through DOGE. The problem is that DOGE mispresents the real cause of the fiscal profligacy. The budget deficit is not due to the salaries of civil servants, who are being wantonly fired, or to the government’s R&D spending, on which our future prosperity depends, but rather to the combination of tax cuts for the rich, and reckless spending on America’s perpetual wars, U.S. funding for Israel’s non-stop wars, America’s 750 overseas military bases, the bloated CIA and other intelligence agencies, and interest payments on the soaring federal debt.

Trump and the Congressional Republicans are reportedly taking aim at Medicaid—that is, at the poorest and most vulnerable Americans—to make way for yet another tax cut for the richest Americans. They may soon go after Social Security and Medicare too.

Trump’s tariffs will fail to close the trade and budget deficits, raise prices, and make America and the world poorer by squandering the gains from trade. The U.S. will be the enemy of the world for the harm that it is causing to itself and the rest of the world.

A Disaster Of Idiocy: So This Penguin Came Up To Me


Penguins on Heard Island protesting Trump's new tariff
Screenshot from Reddit

Abby Zimet
Apr 04, 2025
COMMON DREAMS


Flaunting "the peculiar Trumpian stupidity," the mad king's giddy "liberation" of the global economy - by witlessly slapping tariffs on every country except Russia based on a simplistic, "insane" formula that instantly crashed U.S. and foreign markets - has been universally slammed. And that was before we learned several tariff targets are in fact remote outcroppings of ice and rock populated by no humans but many freeloading penguins and seals, who thank God won't be "looting and pillaging" us any more.

In his announcement we've finally been liberated from being able to buy things from other countries, the fragile, unloved man-child with a terror of being mocked or fleeced based his "batshit crazy" action on a sociopathic "you hurt us, we hurt you" world view, wielding random tariffs as a weapon to "fight back" against countries that have “taken advantage of us." "For decades, our country has been looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far," he said of the richest nation in the world. Holding a big chart of his shiny new tariff plan, he repeatedly trotted out a new word he just added to the 17 he already knows. "Reciprocal," he proclaimed, “That means they do it to us, and we do it to them. Very simple. Can’t get simpler than that." Or, it turns out, dumber. Evidently orchestrated by some "willing sycophants," the moronic method he used to calculate trade and economic figures for every country in the world - except Russia - has been compared to "a science project by a stoned high schooler."

In their "back-of-the-envelope calculations" - but with Greek letters! - the White House looked up our trade deficit with each country, divided it by that country's exports, and to be "kind" halved that figure. But obtusely using tariffs to target countries, not products - the only way they can sometimes work - is so random, over-simplified and counter-productive that Thom Hartmann compares it to Yosemite Sam chasing Bugs Bunny around with a shotgun, blasting holes in everything while completely missing his target. As a result of what one expert calls this "extraordinary nonsense," the tariffs bear almost no relation to the economic realities of many countries: There are "grotesque” tariffs of almost 50% on poor countries like Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, tiny Lesotho in southern Africa, and even the UK, with an almost $12 billion surplus, got a 10% tariff. And thanks to America's voters "handing the keys to the world’s largest economy to a low-wattage imbecile who went broke running casinos," US companies will be hardest hit.

Ironically, the worst will be the biggest - Microsoft, Amazon, Nike, Meta, Tesla, Target, Lululemon, Dollar Tree - whose supply chains depend on overseas manufacturing, mostly in China or Vietnam; Apple will reportedly see $275 billion in market value wiped out. Overall, the "uninformed tariff song-and-dance" meant an economy months ago deemed “the envy of the world” saw markets abruptly plunge into a free-fall that erased nearly $2 trillion from U.S. stocks, a nosedive of over 800 points, the biggest decline in years. Within minutes, over 80% of companies in the S&P 500 were trading lower, a market response traders called "worse than the worst case scenario." In one surreal moment, Trump appeared on air declaring, "Stocks will soar," even as a split screen showed stocks plummeting in real time. A flood of disastrous headlines quickly followed: Stocks "tank," "dive," "slide," "plunge," "dip," ""tumble" as investors "flee," along with the broad consensus, "There really is no positive outcome to this." So much winning.

Donny tried to avoid possible - albeit so unfair - criticism by waiting till 4 p.m. when the markets closed to announce his swell new idea. He failed (again): The backlash was swift. The Shovel: "In 'a massive fucking surprise,' a man who has run six companies into bankruptcy and wasn’t even able to make money out of A CASINO has absolutely no idea what he is doing while in charge of the world’s largest economy." Paul Krugman called the "crudity" of his tariff plan "malignant stupidity." Many cited its fatal flaws: The US isn't "spinning up new Nike factories overnight," employment will soar, so will China's economy in the vacuum, rage will greet ruined retirement funds, even coffee - no we don't make it - will be hit. "There is no reality in which the American consumer does not get majorly fucked," said one sage. "The trouble with tariffs," said a JP Morgan executive, "is they raise prices, slow economic growth, cut profits, increase unemployment, worsen inequality (and) increase global tensions. Other than that, they’re fine.”

Still, being "a blithering idiot," "a fucking moron" and "a Barely Sentient Shitstain," Trump blithely praised himself for allegedly lowering prices on "groceries, an old-fashioned word but beautiful. It's a bag with different things in it." Responses to the "groceries" lecture from "a demented madman who's never set foot in a grocery store": "Good thing we've never heard of them because we can't afford them now," "Give me 2 groceries, my good man!" "President Poopypants is learning us bigly," "You're paying $20 or $30 for a banana? We're going to bring it back down to $10 dollars or whatever you grocery people pay," "And don't forget your ID!" "Stable genius doing stable genius shit here," "A man for the people, just not our people." "It’s like watching a bad episode of South Park," "We are living in the stupid timeline." He also took credit for the word "gasoline - usually we talk about fuel prices. Gas. I love that word." More responses from those paying up to $12 on eggs: "I'd throw eggs at him but they cost more than gasoline." And, "What planet is he living on? Because this one has had enough of him."

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

Still, the idiocy went on. Because the list of the world's countries "plundering" the U.S. was evidently assembled by some clueless MAGA intern who looked them up in Wikipedia, it turns out several targeted with tariffs are a. not countries, b. mostly inhabited by American military and c. have little to no economies and/or no people. They include Tokelau, a New Zealand territory of three atolls in the South Pacific, population 1,600, exports around $100,000; The Marshall Islands, 34 atolls in the North Pacific, home to 82,000 mostly American military at a U.S. base for missile testing; the British Indian Ocean Territory, ditto about 3,000 British and U.S. military and contractors; Saint Pierre and Miquelon, eight small French-owned islands near Newfoundland (few thousand residents, modest shellfish exports somehow hit with 50% tariff; also Australia’s Norfolk Island (big oops), Norway’s Svalbard (polar bears, one town) and remote, volcanic Jan Mayan in the Arctic Ocean, home to 18 researchers at a meteorological station.

The most outlandish, admittedly a tough call, are the Heard and McDonald Islands in the southern Indian Ocean, a collection of small remote islands (not countries) managed by Australia's Antarctic Division, listed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and only accessible by sea. Heard, dominated by active volcano Big Ben, is ice, snow and glaciers; McDonald's 100 acres are rocky, and it's had no economic activity since 1877, when the elephant seal trade ended. Mostly used for scientific research, both are uninhabited by humans, but have large populations of penguins, seabirds and elephant seals who don't export anything except cuteness and an occasional waft of "eau de penguin." Still, slap a tariff on those wingless, waddling, fish-gulping, tuxedo-wearing moochers all dressed up with no place to go who've been taking advantage of us way too long: "Flippers up!" "Eat tariffs." "Goddamn woke penguins have to pay up - it's time we stood up to 'em." "Penguins will never menace America again." Etc.

Australia's so pissed they started a government petition topermanently ban Trump, his family, and his flunkies: "Australians have VALUES of mateship, hard work, righting wrongs, and fighting for the underdog" and Trump, opposite, is "an agent of hate and a danger to world peace." Online, almost all the hundreds of comments are from Americans, also Canadians, asking if they can sign, or start their own, or can the Aussies "change your mind, take him and keep him." At home, a Senate resolution just passed rejecting the tariffs, but it'll likely die in the House. FYI: As with deportations and other executive orders, they're treated as laws only because Congress, which ordinarily imposes them, has abandoned its co-equal role before Trump's claim of "national emergency." And servile MAGA bizarrely plays along. On his tariff malpractice, Agriculture Sec. Brooke Rollins praised Trump's "genius" even as a ticker showed stocks down 1,200 points, gushing, "We are really, really excited, and very grateful for (his) leadership (sic)."

The next morning, Trump was likewise delusional. "THE OPERATION IS OVER!” he wrote. “THE PATIENT LIVED, AND IS HEALING! (aka global markets are plummeting like we've never seen). THE PROGNOSIS IS THAT THE PATIENT WILL BE FAR STRONGER, BIGGER, BETTER, AND MORE RESILIENT THAN EVER BEFORE." To reporters, he babbled, "I think it’s going very well... I said this would exactly be the way it is. Now the rest of the world wants to see if there is any way they can make a deal. It’s going to be unbelievable. We’ve never seen anything like it.,,The stock is going to boom. The country is going to boom." (The tricky part: just what kind of boom.) Then he left for a golf dinner with Saudi reps, skipping the viewing of the coffins of four soldiers killed in Lithuania. But one patriot helpfully finished his narrative: "So this penguin came up to me, big penguin, strong penguin, tears running down his flippers, and he came up to me and said ‘Sir, thank you sir, my fellow penguins, they’ve been taking advantage of you sir, in ways that nobody has ever seen, sir...’"

“It’s now clear that the Administration computed reciprocal tariffs without using tariff data. This is to economics what creationism is to biology, astrology is to astronomy, or RFK thought is to vaccine science." - Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers

Trump's Tariffs Are Extremely Dumb, Just Not For The Reasons You Might Think

This is a con on a global scale. Trump is not rejecting the corporate trade model. He’s weaponizing it.


U.S. President Donald Trump holds up a chart of "reciprocal tariffs" while speaking during a “Make America Wealthy Again” trade announcement event in the Rose Garden at the White House on April 2, 2025 in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)


Iza Camarillo
Apr 04, 2025

Common Dreams

On April 2, Donald Trump declared a national emergency and announced sweeping tariffs on nearly all imported goods. The headlines were dramatic — tariffs on China, allies like Canada and Mexico, and everything from cars to coffee beans. His administration framed the move as a patriotic stance for “reciprocal trade” and economic sovereignty.

Don’t be fooled. This isn’t the collapse of “free trade.” It’s the continuation of corporate globalization — just with a MAGA bumper sticker slapped on it.

Trump says he’s standing up for American workers. But he’s the same president who signed the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) and called it “the fairest, most balanced, and beneficial trade agreement we have ever signed into law.” The rebranded North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) deal — despite some improvements forced in by congressional Democrats and civil society organizations — contained much of the same structural rot that has enabled outsourcing, empowered monopolies, and tied the hands of governments trying to protect their people and environment.

Trump is not rejecting the corporate trade model. He’s weaponizing it.

For decades, “free trade” deals like NAFTA locked in rules written by and for multinational corporations: rules that made offshoring easier, gutted environmental protections, and prioritized investor rights over worker rights. Stagnant wages, emptied factory towns, and rising income inequality have caused widespread pain and frustration among working Americans — which Trump has weaponized again and again.

Tariffs can be part of the answer to these problems, but Trump’s ham-handed approach is not it. There’s no industrial strategy. No labor plan. No climate protections. Just a unilateral, top-down stunt that does nothing to dismantle the corporate architecture still rigging the global economy.

Pair this “concept of a plan” with the rest of his agenda: gutting investment in vital sectors such as biomedical research, support for basic science and clean and affordable energy technologies and products; slashing all efforts to combat child labor and other egregious labor rights violations around the world, providing tax cuts for billionaires and corporations; stripping away health care, food support and other vital services for the most vulnerable Americans, undermining Social Security, and decertifying and undermining the power of labor unions.

It’s clear working people will not be the winners here.

Who Wrote the Rules? U.S. Corporations, Not Foreign Adversaries

Trump loves to blame other countries, claiming global trade has “looted, pillaged, raped, and plundered” the U.S. economy in his “Liberation Day” speech. He claims that the U.S. has been victimized by other countries and has been “too nice” in response.

Nothing could be further from the truth — the rules of the neoliberal trade system were rigged in favor of large corporate interests in the Global North. While workers in the U.S. and around the world were the losers, Wall Street, Big Tech, Big Ag, Big Pharma, and other U.S. corporate giants have always been the winners.

For decades, U.S. corporate lobbyists have used their privileged access to closed-door trade negotiations to rig the rules to maximize their profits, not to serve working people, small businesses, or the environment.

They pushed for extreme intellectual property rules to entrench Big Pharma monopolies that keep the price of medicines sky high, with deadly consequences. They demanded open capital markets and deregulated financial flows for Wall Street while securing rules that let agribusiness giants flood foreign markets with subsidized U.S. commodities, displacing millions of farmers and leading to forced migration.

Trade justice requires more than poorly designed tariffs. It demands systemic reform: binding labor rights, climate protections, resilient supply chains, and democratic accountability. Trump offers none of that.

At the same time, they ensured that governments couldn’t support domestic industries, raise labor standards, or enforce environmental protections without being accused of “trade distortion.” The result was a race to the bottom for workers and communities — here and abroad — with record profits for corporate giants.

It matters a lot that Trump is identifying the wrong perpetrators of the failed global trade system because that sets the table for wrong solutions.

Once we identify multinational corporations as the architects of the current system, we’re directed toward the right solutions – not blanket, high tariffs based on mindless formulas, but a new trade policy and new trade rules that prioritize the interests of workers, consumers, and the environment.

NAFTA to USMCA: Same Corporate Model With Some Improvements (No Thanks to Trump)

Trump spent years railing against NAFTA as the “worst trade deal anybody in history has ever entered into,” tapping into the legitimate grievances of workers and communities harmed by its race to the bottom. He campaigned on a promise to eliminate it and replace it with a better agreement for workers.

However, once elected, he opted to renegotiate and rebrand the deal in the form of the USMCA, which he then insisted was “the best trade deal in history.” Now, in a dizzying reversal, he’s claiming the USMCA has been a disaster that only an aggressive wave of “retaliatory” tariffs on Canada and Mexico will fix.

In reality, while some improvements were forced into the negotiation, the USMCA largely preserved the core logic that made NAFTA so harmful in the first place. It expands corporate rights, limits democratic oversight, and undermines public protections in the name of increased trade.

The new labor provisions — often cited as proof of a “new era” in trade — were not original features of Trump’s deal. They were won through months of intense organizing and negotiation by House Democrats, labor unions, and civil society groups.

Congressional Democrats working in close alliance with the AFL-CIO drew a hard line. Backed by the relentless organizing of groups like Public Citizen, the Communications Workers of America, United Steelworkers, and a transnational coalition of Mexican and Canadian labor and civil society partners, they made it clear: they would block passage of any deal unless meaningful labor enforcement were included and damaging Big Pharma giveaways were removed.

Trump’s administration favored language that preserved corporate prerogatives and offered only symbolic nods to labor rights. Still, in the end, it acquiesced to congressional Democrats’ demands. It incorporated essential tools like the facility-specific Rapid Response Mechanism for labor enforcement and eliminated some of the most egregious giveaways to Big Pharma.

However, the structural rot from NAFTA remained.

While experts across the ideological spectrum lauded the drastic reduction of controversial investor privileges that allow corporations to sue governments over public interest laws through investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), Trump preserved ISDS for fossil fuel firms operating in Mexico — a carve-out aggressively pushed by Big Oil.

Agribusiness also retained its arsenal. The ongoing U.S. trade challenge to Mexico’s restrictions on genetically modified corn — measures rooted in precautionary health standards and cultural preservation — reveal the deal’s true intent. Rather than respecting national policy space over food safety, trade rules are once again being deployed to dismantle domestic protections at the behest of corporations.

Not only did Trump fail to fix NAFTA, but he made it even worse in at least one crucial way: Big Tech secured its wishlist in the form of a digital trade chapter. These new terms undermine the ability of U.S. states, Congress, and other countries’ governments to hold Big Tech accountable for gender and racial bias in AI, rampant abuse of our privacy, and monopolistic overreach.

Performative “Protectionism” and the Authoritarian Trade Playbook

Far from dismantling the corporate trade regime, Trump’s first term revealed him as a loyal steward of it — so long as he could plaster his name on it. Despite the USMCA rebrand, he left the core NAFTA structure intact and continued to stoke public anger over working people’s struggles — not by confronting the root causes but by scapegoating other nations. And he has been increasingly employing tariff threats as his weapon of choice — not in pursuit of justice but as a blunt instrument of control.

Just weeks ago, Trump threatened new tariffs unless Mexico deployed troops to militarize the border. He pressured Colombia to accept a deportation flight of asylum seekers.

Big Tech companies are awaiting their handouts, as it is widely expected that Trump will lift tariffs on countries that agree to undo tech accountability policies.

And perversely, he is using tariffs as a cudgel to pressure other countries into signing the very liberalizing trade agreements he claims to oppose.

“Liberation Day” was more of the same from this ever-more-authoritarian White House: an emergency decree bypassing Congress, escalating instability, and concentrating power in the executive. Trump hasn’t rejected the anti-democratic nature of the neoliberal trade model — he’s replicating it with a vengeance.

All Madness, No Method

While tariffs can be a useful tool, they must be transparently employed in strategic sectors for a clear purpose following careful analysis and open debate.

Trump’s tariffs, however, are based on misleading data and flawed logic. He uses exaggerated trade deficit calculations and stays silent on how the U.S. dollar’s dominance enables America to import far more than it exports, a luxury most Global South nations — burdened with debt and structural trade deficits — cannot afford.

The methodology behind these tariffs has experts scratching their heads.

Trump claimed that the “reciprocal tariffs” were derived from a detailed assessment of each country’s tariff and non-tariff barriers (more on these in a moment). In fact, the number assigned to each country seems to be based on the difference between the total value of imports the U.S. receives from a country versus the amount we export to it.

Apparently, no regard was given to why there may be a large imbalance. For example, Lesotho, which Trump dismissed as a country “nobody has ever heard of,” was hit with the highest tariff of any country at 50%. Forget the fact that the small, landlocked country’s population of 2 million may not be able to afford Made in America products, leading to a lopsided trade balance.

The crude formula used to determine each country’s “reciprocal” tariff was described by Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman as something that appeared to be “thrown together by a junior staffer with only a couple of hours’ notice,” and “reads like something written by a student who hasn’t done the reading and is trying to bullshit their way through an exam.”

As some commentators have noted, this tariff breakdown is what you get if you ask ChatGPT to come up with a U.S. trade policy. This could very well be the first global economic policy written “of, by, and for” our robot overlords. What could possibly go wrong?

The Corporate Wishlist

Since the Trump administration clearly did not take on the, admittedly Herculean, task of reviewing the thousands of tariffs and trade barriers imposed by hundreds of countries, it simply used trade imbalances as a crude proxy. It’s a stand-in for the cost of that country’s tariffs and, importantly, its non-tariff barriers.

“Non-tariff barrier” is trade-speak for “any policy that’s not a tariff” but might restrict trade — from climate protections to minimum wage laws to consumer protections in the form of toxic food additives. While many non-tariff barriers serve vital public policies, corporations and trade negotiators often treat them as obstacles to profit.

According to the April 2 executive order, Trump can unilaterally decide to lower the tariffs imposed on a country if it takes “significant steps to remedy non-reciprocal trade arrangements and align sufficiently with the United States on economic and national security matters.”

What constitutes a “significant step” isn’t defined, but it certainly looks like an open invitation for governments to slash their tariffs and reverse policies to appease Trump and his billionaire buddies.

For what exactly those policies may be, just look to the report Trump waved around at the beginning of his so-called “Liberation Day” tariff announcement speech in the Rose Garden.

That document is a 400-page list of the policies that other countries have enacted — or are even considering enacting — that U.S. corporations don’t like. It’s the National Trade Estimates Report on Foreign Trade Barriers, an annual government report that has long been criticized as an inappropriate overreach to name and shame other countries’ legitimate public interest policies. It’s also a glimpse of the policies that Trump may seek to have destroyed in exchange for tariff relief.

The policies targeted in this year’s report include climate protections, including Canada’s Clean Fuel Standard, the European Union’s Deforestation-Free Supply Chain Regulation, and Japan’s renewable energy incentives — all of which are aligned with global climate commitments.

Public health regulations aimed at protecting consumers, preserving biodiversity, and preventing long-term health risks were also attacked. Employed by dozens of countries, these include bans, testing requirements, or even labeling policies on pesticides like Roundup’s glyphosate, genetically engineered food, ractopamine in beef and pork, and heavy metals in cosmetics.

Regulations that promote competition in the digital ecosystem, laws that impose digital services taxes on Big Tech firms, place conditions for cross-border data transfers, promote fairness in the digital economy, and laws that regulate emerging technologies such as AI.

Benefits for Trump’s Buddies

Countries are not the only ones who will be supplicating to avoid the full weight of Trump’s tariffs. Despite Trump’s claims that other countries foot the bill on tariffs, it is U.S. importers who must pay this fee … unless they can convince Trump to grant them a special exemption.

It is well-documented that the opaque and chaotic tariff exclusion process created in Trump’s first term quickly overwhelmed government agencies and enabled a quid pro quo spoils system that rewarded the rich and well-connected. A revolving door of lobbyists, including former and future Trump administration officials, were able to secure lucrative tariff exceptions for their CEO clients through political pressure, informal meetings, and campaign contributions.

Trump’s latest stunt had nothing to do with “liberation.” You can’t fix a rigged trade system while keeping its rules and attacking people at every turn.

Through this system, Trump wielded tariffs and tariff exceptions to reward his friends and punish his enemies. CEOs that donated to Republicans had a 1 in 5 chance of having their exemption request granted versus 1 in 10 for CEOs that supported Democrats, according to a January 2025 study.

If Trump’s recent attacks on law firms, universities, and the press are any indication, he’s prepared to double down on using his second term to punish enemies and enrich himself and his friends. And his dismantling of watchdog agencies and boosting of big business ties set the stage for tariff exemptions to be even more corrupt and harmful to workers, consumers, and the U.S. and global economy.

What other displays of political loyalty might companies offer to Trump for a tariff exclusion this time around? Public endorsement of his policies? Promises to monitor employees for DEI ideologies or views critical of the administration?
We Deserve Better

Trade justice requires more than poorly designed tariffs. It demands systemic reform: binding labor rights, climate protections, resilient supply chains, and democratic accountability. Trump offers none of that.

There’s no industrial plan. No support for unions. No climate-resilience vision. Just a chaotic, performative tariff regime, which in practice will surely be wielded to reward loyalty and punish dissent.

Trump’s latest stunt had nothing to do with “liberation.” You can’t fix a rigged trade system while keeping its rules and attacking people at every turn. Trump talks a big game but serves the same corporate interests that gutted labor rights in the first place. Working people deserve a system with them at the center, not one that favors corporations.

This isn’t trade justice. It’s a con.

Khanna Sounds Alarm as 4,100+ Factory Workers Laid Off Amid Trump Tariff Chaos


"Imagine if federal worker unions and Democratic Party officials showed up at the plant gate of a company that was about to close its doors," said one labor advocate recently. "Why aren't the Democrats doing this?"


Stellantis workers walk to the Warren Stamping Plant to start their shift on April 4, 2025 in Warren, Michigan. Stellantis announced they will temporarily be laying off approximately 900 of its U.S workers at several of its stamping and powertrain plants around the country, including the Warren Stamping Plant, as the tariffs placed on imported automobiles and auto parts by President Donald Trump take effect.
(Photo by Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)

Jon Queally
Apr 06, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

Congressman Ro Khanna is raising the alarm about mass layoffs in the U.S. economy resulting from President Donald Trump's failed economic policies. Over 4,000 factory workers lost their jobs this week due to firings or plant closures.

On Thursday, automaker Stellantis, citing conditions created by Trump's tariffs, announced temporary layoffs for 900 workers, represented by the United Auto Workers (UAW). "The affected U.S. employees," reportedCNN, "work at five different Midwest plants: the Warren Stamping and Sterling Stamping plants in Michigan, as well as the Indiana Transmission Plant, Kokomo Transmission Plant and Kokomo Casting Plant, all in Kokomo, Indiana."

In a social media thread on Saturday night, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.)—a lawmaker who has advocating loudly, including in books and in Congress, for an industrialization policy that would bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States—posted a litany of other layoffs announced recently as part of the economic devastation and chaos unleashed by Trump as well as conditions that reveal how vulnerable U.S. workers remain.

"This week," Khann wrote, "19 factories had mass layoffs, 15 closed, and 4,134 factory workers across America lost their jobs. Cleveland-Cliffs laid off 1,200 workers in Michigan and Minnesota as they deal with the impact of Trump's tariffs on steel and auto imports."

"We need jobs and currently at this time, the majority of the companies that we work with and represent our members at are not hiring." —Mark DePaoli, UAW

For union leaders representing those workers at Cleveland-Cliffs, they said "chaos" was the operative word. "Chaos. You know? A lot of questions. You've got a lot of people who worked there a long time that are potentially losing their job," Bill Wilhelm, a servicing representative and editor with UAW Local 600, told local ABC News affiliate WXYZ-Channel 7.

The United Auto Workers says the layoff fund set aside for those losing their jobs won't last long and find them new jobs of that quality will not be easy. "Our first concern will be to look around at all the companies where we have members and see if we can find jobs," said the local's 1st vice president, Mark DePaoli. "I mean, jobs are going to be the key. We need jobs and currently at this time, the majority of the companies that we work with and represent our members at are not hiring."

The pain of workers in families in Dearborn, as indicated by Khanna's thread, is just the tip of the iceberg. In post after post, he cataloged a stream of new layoffs impacting workers nationwide and across various sectors:Poultry distributor Perdue Farms laid off 433 workers this week in Monterey, Tennessee.
As part of mass layoffs to the US branches, tractor manufacturer John Deere laid off 9 workers from its Ankeny, Iowa, facility. The company has also voiced concerns over the impact of Trump's tariffs on production.
Semiconductor manufacturer Summit Interconnect closed in Santa Ana, California, costing 74 people their jobs. Congress needs to invest in manufacturing to guide the U.S. into leading semiconductor manufacturing.
Automotive and industrial power transmission manufacturer Bando USA Inc. cut 65 jobs from their facility in Bowling Green, Kentucky.
Coal manufacturer Wilson Creek Energy LLC cut 332 jobs after closing their plant in Friedens, PA. Another 93 workers were cut when the Grantsville, Maryland plant closed.
In Sumner, Washington pipe manufacturer Advanced Drainage Systems closed, costing 54 employees their jobs.
Electrical equipment manufacturer Sensata Technologies closed in Carpinteria, California, resulting in 57 employees losing their jobs. The company is closing to offset the rising costs of inflation.
In San Jose, California, electronics manufacturer InvenSense Inc. laid off 55 people due to new market conditions in the broadening tech industry.
Battery manufacturer Quantumscape Battery Inc. laid off 53 workers in San Jose, California, as part of a restructuring effort.
Medical device manufacturer Biosense Webster Inc. cut 9 jobs when it permanently closed its Los Gatos, California, facility.
Biotech manufacturer ImmunityBio, Inc. laid off 9 employees from its El Segundo, California, facility and one from its facility in Culver City, California.
Food processor Del Monte Foods, Inc. in Hannaford, California, cut 378.
In Agawam, Massachusetts, bakery wholesaler Connecticut Pie, LLC DBA Diana's Bakery laid off 229 workers.
Poultry plant AlaTrade Foods laid off 165 employees at its Phenix City, Alabama, facility.
Food products manufacturer, Rich Products Corporation laid off 139 workers after closing its Santa Fe Springs facility in California to offset rising costs.
In Townson, Maryland, sports apparel manufacturer Fila USA, Inc. laid off 112 workers. The company also laid off 18 employees from their facility in Curtis Bay, Maryland.
Engineering services company, S&B Engineers and Constructors, Ltd. in Kingsport, Tennessee, cut 112 workers.
In Bridgeview, Illinois, 88 workers lost their jobs when sustainable packaging company Smurfit Westrock closed.
Chemical manufacturer Syzygy Plasmonics, conducted layoffs in two Houston, Texas, facilities, cutting 68 jobs total.
Packaging products manufacturer Pregis closed in San Antonio, California. Forty-five people lost their jobs.
In Longview, Texas, construction supplies manufacturer S & B Engineers and Constructors cut 43 jobs.
Board game manufacturer, Edaron, LLC closed in South Hadley, Massachusetts, cutting 24 jobs.
In Holliston, Massachusetts, cannabis manufacturer Pharma Cann laid off 19 workers.
Medical management facility, Prime MSO, LLC closed in Encino, California, costing 6 people their jobs.

With public sector workers being fired in massive numbers nationwide due to the blitzkrieg unleashed by the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, private sector workers are no strangers to mass layoffs within a U.S. economy dominated by corporate interests and union density still at historic lows.

Les Leopold, executive director of the Labor Institute who has been sounding the alarm for years about the devastation associated with mass layoffs, wrote recently about how the situation is even worse than he previously understood. On top of existing corporate greed and the stock buyback phenomena driving many of the mass layoffs in the private sector, Trump's mismanagement of tariff and trade policy is almost certain to make things worse, triggering more job losses in addition to higher costs on consumer goods.

In order to combat Trump, Leopold wrote last month, "Democrats should take a page from Trump and put job protection on the top of their agenda. As tariffs bite and cause job destruction, the Democrats should show up and support those laid-off workers."




Instead of simply calling Trump's tariffs "insane," which many rightly have, the Democrats "should call them job-killing tariffs," advised Leopold. "As prices rise, they can blame Trump for that as well."

With Trump's economic policies coming into full view, the picture is bleak for businesses large and small—and that means more pain for workers.

As Axios' Ben Berkowitz reported Saturday. "When everything gets more expensive everywhere because of tariffs, that starts a cycle for businesses, too — one that might end with layoffs, bankruptcies, and higher prices for the survivors' customers," he explained. "The cycle is just starting now, but the pain is immediate."

The "big picture," Berkowitz continued, is this:
The stock market is not the economy, but if you want a decent proxy for Main Street businesses, look at the Russell 2000, a broad measure of the stock market's small companies across industries.

—It's down almost 20% this year alone.
—That in and of itself doesn't make a business turn the lights off, but it says something about public confidence in their prospects.
—"The market is like a real time poll ... this is going to impact all businesses in one way or another undoubtedly," Ken Mahoney of Mahoney Asset Management wrote Friday.
Khanna's Democratic colleague in the House, Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas, said the impacts of Trump's tariff and austerity policies are very real and already felt in his district as he roasted Trump for having a reported golfing weekend as the global economy reels and American workers and retirees suffer:




In Sunday comments to Common Dreams, Leopold wanted to know where Khanna and other Democrats were last year when John Deere laid off a thousand workers.

"What do the progressive Democrats have to say about the tens of thousands of mass layoffs that take place each month? Radio silence," he said. "It would be useful if they had a policy that addressed Wall Street induced mass layoffs rather than just opposing tariffs, but I wouldn't bet on that."

On the question of silence and who, ultimately, will stand up for American workers—whether in the public or private sector—it's not clear who will emerge as a true defender or what forces would galvanize to truly represent the interests of the nation's working class.

"Imagine if federal worker unions and Democratic Party officials showed up at the plant gate of a company that was about to close its doors to finance hefty stock buybacks for its billionaire owners," Leopold wrote in early March. "A show of support for their fellow layoff victims and a unity message aimed at stopping billionaire job destruction would be simple to craft and easy to share. It would be news."

"Why aren't the Democrats doing this?" he asked.

With US Now a 'Pseudo-Democracy,' Sanders Says Democrats Have to Answer One Key Question

"I think that the Democratic Party has to make a fundamental decision," says the independent Senator from Vermont, "and I'm not sure that they will make the right decision."


Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) speaks during a rally on March 21, 2025 at Civic Center Park in Denver, Colorado. Sanders And Ocasio-Cortez are holding a series of rallies they are calling the "Fight Oligarchy" tour and will include stops in Tucson and Tempe, Arizona.
(Photo by Chet Strange/Getty Images)

Jon Queally
Apr 06, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

"I think when we talk about America is a democracy, I think we should rephrase it, call it a 'pseudo-democracy.'"

That's what Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said Sunday morning in response to questions from CBS News about the state of the nation, with President Donald Trump gutting the federal government from head to toe, challenging constitutional norms, allowing his cabinet of billionaires to run key agencies they philosophically want to destroy, and empowering Elon Musk—the world's richest person—to run roughshod over public education, undermine healthcare programs like Medicare and Medicaid, and attack Social Security.

Taking a weekend away from his ongoing "Fight Oligarchy" tour, which has drawn record crowds in both right-leaning and left-leaning regions of the country over recent weeks, Sanders said the problem is deeply entrenched now in the nation's political system—and both major parties have a lot to answer for.

"One of the other concerns when I talk about oligarchy," Sanders explained to journalist Robert Acosta, "it's not just massive income and wealth inequality. It's not just the power of the billionaire class. These guys, led by Musk—and as a result of this disastrous Citizens UnitedSupreme Court decision—have now allowed billionaires essentially to own our political process. So, I think when we talk about America is a democracy, I think we should rephrase it, call it a 'pseudo-democracy.' And it's not just Musk and the Republicans; it's billionaires in the Democratic Party as well."

Sanders said that while he's been out on the road in various places, what he perceives—from Americans of all stripes—is a shared sense of dread and frustration.

"I think I'm seeing fear, and I'm seeing anger," he said. "Sixty percent of our people are living paycheck-to-paycheck. Media doesn't talk about it. We don't talk about it enough here in Congress."

In a speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate on Friday night, just before the Republican-controlled chamber was able to pass a sweeping spending resolution that will lay waste to vital programs like Medicaid and food assistance to needy families so that billionaires and the ultra-rich can enjoy even more tax giveaways, Sanders said, "What we have is a budget proposal in front of us that makes bad situations much worse and does virtually nothing to protect the needs of working families."



What the GOP spending plan does do, he added, "is reward wealthy campaign contributors by providing over $1 trillion in tax breaks for the top one percent."

"I wish my Republican friends the best of luck when they go home—if they dare to hold town hall meetings—and explain to their constituents why they think, at a time of massive income and wealth inequality, it's a great idea to give tax breaks to billionaires and cut Medicaid, education, and other programs that working class families desperately need."

On Saturday, millions of people took to the street in coordinated protests against the Trump administration's attack on government, the economy, and democracy itself.

Voiced at many of the rallies was also a frustration with the failure of the Democrats to stand up to Trump and offer an alternative vision for what the nation can be. In his CBS News interview, Sanders said the key question Democrats need to be asking is the one too many people in Washington, D.C. tend to avoid.

"Why are [the Democrats] held in so low esteem?" That's the question that needs asking, he said.

"Why has the working class in this country largely turned away from them? And what do you have to do to recapture that working class? Do you think working people are voting for Trump because he wants to give massive tax breaks to billionaires and cut Social Security and Medicare? I don't think so. It's because people say, 'I am hurting. Democratic Party has talked a good game for years. They haven't done anything.' So, I think that the Democratic Party has to make a fundamental decision, and I'm not sure that they will make the right decision, which side are they on? [Will] they continue to hustle large campaign contributions from very, very wealthy people, or do they stand with the working class?"

The next leg of Sanders' "Fight Oligarchy' tour will kick off next Saturday, with stops in California, Utah, and Idaho over four days.

"The American people, whether they are Democrats, Republicans or Independents, do not want billionaires to control our government or buy our elections," said Sanders. "That is why I will be visiting Republican-held districts all over the Western United States. When we are organized and fight back, we can defeat oligarchy."

How the anti-Trump backlash is growing

Robert Reich

April 04, 2025

ALTERNET

In many ways this was another horrific week. Like a terrible hurricane, the Trump dictatorship is sweeping more people into its maw while further destroying our public institutions and wrecking what’s left of our civil norms.

Yet this week also featured 11 reasons for modest optimism:

1. Wisconsin Supreme Court vote

Despite Elon Musk’s hysterical warnings, cheesehead preening, and more than $20 million spent by the Republican in the race for the Wisconsin Supreme Court — much of it by Musk — it didn’t matter: Liberal judge Susan Crawford won by a remarkable 10 points, securing the court’s liberal majority. A state that narrowly backed Trump in 2024 swung sharply away. Every county in Wisconsin shifted to the left in this race compared to the 2024 presidential race.

Not only did Judge Crawford pile up huge margins in Milwaukee and Madison, but she kept those of her opponent, Brad Schimel, down in Milwaukee’s predominantly white, middle- and upper-middle-class suburbs, where the abortion issue doubtless moved some Republican women to cross over and vote for her.

Wisconsin voters recoiled at the odor of Musk. At one point, Crawford referred to Schimel as “Elon Schimel.” That said it all.

Elon is proving to be a huge political liability. Trump says Musk is leaving the regime in a few weeks but I have my doubts.

2. Other races

In other down-ballot races, Democrats saw success on Tuesday.

Democrats won the other statewide races in Wisconsin. For state superintendent of public instruction, incumbent Jill Underly, who was backed by unions and Democrats, defended her seat comfortably against a GOP-backed challenger who supported school vouchers. Wisconsin Democrats also dislodged an incumbent county executive in light-red Winnebago County, and Illinois Dems flipped the mayoralty in the city of Aurora.

In Florida, Republicans defended two congressional seats — but by much tighter margins than in November. Democrats in both districts campaigned against the DOGE cuts to Social Security/Medicaid/VA. These two districts were so red that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee did not even consider investing campaign funds.

If you apply the shifts in Florida across the House battlefield in 2026, Democrats would be on track to flip over 40 seats and easily retake the majority.

In another major upset, voters in Aurora, Illinois, ousted their Trump-aligned mayor, Richard Irvin, and elected city councillor and community labor activist John Laesch as their next mayor.

What should really concern Republicans is that this growing rejection of Trump took hold even before he lowered the boom on the economy with his inflation-blowing tariffs. “[I] think that these elections are going to be proxies, or almost like weather devices for figuring out what kind of storm we’re going to be up against next year,” Republican Senator Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) warned fellow Republicans.

3. Nationwide, an ever-stronger rejection of Trump

What happened in Wisconsin and Florida reflects something that’s happening nationwide. Trump is doing far more to mobilize his opponents than to rally his supporters. Here are this week’s poll numbers (again, all polls conducted before Trump’s wildly irresponsible tariffs).

Reuters/Ipsos done between 3/30 and 4/1: Trump has 43% approval, 53% disapproval — the lowest approval since his return to office

YouGov/Economist poll done between 3/30 and 4/1: Trump has 46% approval, 49% disapproval — lower approval than Biden’s at this point in his term

Marquette Law poll done between 3/17 and 3/27: Trump has 46% approval, 54% disapproval

Morning Consult poll done between 3/28 and 3/30: Trump has 47% approval, 50% disapproval

4. Town halls are terrible for Republicans

Indiana Republican Representative Victoria Spartz was booed and scolded by constituents at two town halls this week, over Signalgate, deportations, and DOGE cuts.

Colorado Republican Representative Lauren Boebert held a telephone town hall this week but still faced tough questions about Musk/DOGE, Medicaid, and SNAP cuts.


Meanwhile, Democrats continue to hold town halls in GOP districts where Republican incumbents are unwilling to hold them. Republican Representative John James wouldn’t meet with voters in his district, so Democratic Senator Chris Murphy and Representative Maxwell Frost went to James’s Michigan district last Saturday to hold a town hall meeting with James’s constituents instead.

5. Democrats are fired up (finally)

No wonder Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) have become heroes far beyond the party’s progressive wing and have drawn such enormous crowds for their anti-Trump, anti-oligarchy rallies. The next stop on their tour against oligarchy will be Los Angeles on April 12.

Tomorrow’s nationwide April 5 “Hands Off” day of action also promises to be a big one.

The conventional wisdom had been that Trump’s opponents are less mobilized than we were at a comparable point in his first term back in 2017. In fact, the opposite is true. A study released last month by the Crowd Counting Consortium found “more than twice as many street protests than took place during the same period eight years ago.” The researchers concluded “that resistance against Trump’s agenda in America is not only alive and well. It is savvy, diversifying and probably just getting started.”

Democratic Senator Cory Booker spoke against Trump on the Senate floor for 25 hours and five minutes this week without sitting or exiting the Senate chambers to eat or use a bathroom, thereby breaking by nearly an hour the previous record set 68 years ago. He streamed the speech live on TikTok, where it garnered more than 400 million “likes.” The truly remarkable aspect of his speech was that it was a speech — not a venom-filled rant, but a substantive and thoughtful address to the nation.

Kudos to Senator Booker for reminding us of the importance of speaking out for what we believe and demonstrating America at its best. Meanwhile, Trump and his regime are demonstrating America at its worst: cruel, inhumane, and greedy.

6. Tesla continues to plummet

Meanwhile, Elon is the worst sales rep Tesla and its shareholders could ever imagine. We learned this week that Tesla’s global sales in the first quarter fell 13 percent from a year earlier, largely due to a worldwide consumer backlash against the role that Musk is playing in the Trump administration. After Musk endorsed far-right parties, Tesla sales plunged in Germany by 41.5 percent compared to last year; they were down in France by 41 percent; and down in the UK 0.6 percent

Oh, and Democratic lawmakers in New York state introduced a bill on Wednesday aimed at Musk and the so-called Buffalo Billion project, in which the state spent $959 million to build and equip a plant that Musk’s company leases for $1 a year to operate a solar panel and auto component factory. The bill would determine whether Tesla was meeting job creation targets, making promised investments, paying enough rent, and honoring job training commitments. If not in compliance, the state could claw back state benefits from Tesla, impose penalties, and terminate contracts.

7. Paul Weiss and Skadden are paying a price for selling out to Trump

The disgraced elite law firms Paul Weiss and Skadden Arps — both of which capitulated to Trump to avoid executive orders that could have crippled their businesses — are already paying a price. The firms’ associates are saying both privately and openly that their leaders betrayed their firms’ principles with deals that undermine a commitment to provide free legal work to public interest groups and causes at odds with the White House. A few have quit their jobs. Many aspiring young lawyers are boycotting the two firms. Good!

8. Trump’s tariffs cause utter chaos

I’m including Trump’s bonkers tariffs as a reason for modest optimism even though many in the United States and around the world will be terribly harmed by them, but the tariffs will smooth the way for Trump to be booted out of office — in 2028 or sooner.

Those tariffs are likely to be the worst economic policy since the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930, which worsened the Great Depression. They will cost the typical American family at least $4,000 this year, fuel inflation, and very possibly wreck the economy.

Stock and bond markets have plunged in reaction. The Wall Street Journal estimates that $2.7 trillion of the value of American corporations has already disappeared as a result of the tariffs. Many big corporations are planning layoffs.

Other nations will surely raise their tariffs on American exports or even block certain American services in retaliation.

9. Trump has lost his Senate majority (at least on tariffs against Canada, which may be a harbinger of more Senate votes against him)

The Senate voted 51-48 Wednesday to undo President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canada — delivering its first major rebuke to Trump since his return to the White House.

Four Republicans — Senators Mitch McConnell (Kentucky), Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), and Rand Paul (Kentucky) — defied Trump and Senate Majority Leader John Thune by voting with Democrats to invalidate a national emergency that Trump declared in February, allowing him to impose a 25 percent tariff on Canadian goods. “Unlike Mexico and China, Canada is not complicit in this crisis,” Collins said.

The resolution’s supporters have described it as a way to send a message to Trump about the broad discontent with his tariff strategy, even if the measure has no chance of becoming law. (Trump has vowed to veto the bill, even if it makes it through the Republican-controlled House.)

In addition, Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassleyintroduced legislation (with Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell) to claw back Congress’s tariff power. The bill would force levies to be approved by Congress and allow them to end the tariffs.

10. Trump’s abductions

My tenth reason for modest optimism is also a tragedy in the making, but it’s stirring up so much public antipathy toward Trump and his incompetent cronies that I’m listing it.

Earlier this week, Trump officials admitted they had made an “administrative error” in abducting a Maryland man whose wife and child are both American citizens and sending him to a notorious Salvadoran prison — despite a court order that he could remain in the United States because he might face torture in El Salvador. The prison where he is now being held, known as CECOT, has long had a reputation for its brutal conditions.

To make matters worse, the Trump regime says it has “no power” to get him out of that El Salvador prison.

This is horrific but it’s also a cause for modest optimism because Americans are beginning to see Trump’s tyranny for what it is. Forcible abductions off the streets and from their homes of people n the United States whom the Trump regime only accuses of being dangerous foreign nationals — without oversight by a neutral trial court — opens the way for the “disappearance” of anyone the regime dislikes. This is what dictators do. It is not something America does — at least not until Trump,

11. Trump’s attack on Social Security is beginning to harm beneficiaries

Let me end today’s list with another horror show that’s about to harm millions of Americans but will almost certainly hasten the end of Trump’s reign of terror (if not also the end of the Republican Party).

Social Security is now engulfed in the worst crisis of its history. That’s not because it’s running out of money or because of fraud or high administrative costs. This crisis is entirely the doing of Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

More than 12 percent of the Social Security Administration’s staff have been pushed out, and Trump has announced plans to fire nearly half of the total Social Security workforce.

The result so far: Social Security field offices are being shut down. Hold times for customer service phone calls are over 2 to 3 hours. The Social Security website crashed four times in 10 days.

I once served as a trustee of the Social Security trust fund. I know how critical this program is to the 73 million Americans who rely on it. They will not abide this raid on a program to which they’ve contributed throughout their working lives.

***

By listing these reasons for modest optimism this week, I don’t mean to imply we are in good shape. To the contrary, the scourge of Trump is worsening.

My purpose in bringing you this list is so you know that despite Trump’s tyranny, the resistance to him is wide and deep — and it continues to build. That’s partly your doing, for which I send you my heartfelt thanks.

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/."