By Kala’e Kong

Now that President Trump is returning to the White House, one finds it necessary to examine the hallmark of his economic agenda: tariffs. President Trump has long been a supporter of protectionism. While on the campaign trail, Trump proposed imposing a 10 percent tariff on all foreign imports, with a 60 percent tariff levied on all Chinese imports. Such a proposal and the broader implications of protectionism will only have an inimical effect on the U.S. economy and will end up hurting the average consumer.

To put it simply, tariffs are a tax on imported goods. Contrary to what Trump says, it’s American companies that pay the tariff and not the exporting country. It’s simply fallacious to say that tariffs are paid by other countries when the exact opposite is true.

Anyone with a basic understanding of economics, Donald Trump notwithstanding, knows that tariffs raise prices and cause stagnation across industries due to the lack of competition from foreign companies. If a company has to pay import duties, raising their operational costs, they could easily transfer that cost to consumers by raising prices. According to the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Trump’s proposed tariffs would cost the average American family an additional $1,700. If that isn’t bad enough, consumers would have fewer choices in the type of products available to them because of the reduction in imported goods. President Trump’s promise to tame inflation is complete balderdash if he plans to impose what is essentially a tax on the American people.

This isn’t the first time that Trump has advocated implementing tariffs. In 2018, the Trump Administration waged a trade war with China by putting tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum imports. What was the result? U.S. businesses and consumers bore virtually the entire burden of the tariffs, with the U.S. economy facing a net loss of $16 billion annually, according to economists from the Tax Foundation. Across-the-board tariffs would just create an even bigger burden to bear.

That President Trump has a fanatical obsession with tariffs couldn’t be clearer. What is perhaps the best demonstration of this was Trump floating the idea of eliminating the federal income tax and replacing it with tariffs. This isn’t only preposterous; it is axiomatically impossible. In 2024, the federal government collected $2.4 trillion in individual income taxes, while only collecting $79 billion from tariffs, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Even if tariffs were ridiculously high, it’d be extremely unlikely that the government could collect as much as it already does in income taxes.

Foundationally, the central premise of protectionism is flawed. One isn’t protecting an industry by eliminating foreign competition. This just creates the conditions for sluggishness as that business has no incentive to improve itself. What’s ironic is that the implementation of tariffs is a form of government intervention in the free-market, which is antithetical to the conservatism that Trump supposedly upholds. In fact, it was William F. Buckley Jr., the father of the American conservative movement, who once said that “protectionism is anathema to any true conservative.”

It has yet to be seen what exactly President Trump will do with his tariff proposals. As misguided as they are, one can only hope that the economy will be able to endure them.

Kala’e Kong is a Saint Louis School student and staff writer for the school’s newspaper.