2025.04.04, 08 Rand & Ron Paul fundamentally wrong on Trump Tariffs

This is the preamble to 2025.04.14 'Bearers of good news shall be stoned'. Funny money, barron investors & MAGA tariffs, PasteBin https://pastebin.com/YQcvyS5C


Three comments at Ron Unz's, synthetizing the argument for Trump's tariffs and criticizing those who oppose them: Rand Paul as spearhead of the effort to bomb the policy, Ron Paul himself joining in. no wonder that Trump walked back on the original tactic...

Original argument formulated on X, summarized on Parler. Links bellow.

*

I.

Ron Unz, 'President Donald Trump and Chairman Mao'

Comment 2025.04.04 (1)
https://www.unz.com/runz/president-donald-trump-and-chairman-mao/?showcomments#comment-7069894
[IA, https://web.archive.org/web/20250512075639/https://www.unz.com/runz/president-donald-trump-and-chairman-mao/?showcomments#comment-7069894

I learned in time to trust Ron Unz’s analyzes on topics I was not familiar with (WW2, zionism, holocaustism, US post-WW2 intellectual history; RFK &Israel) on account of his high degree of self-consciousness. This material nearly ruins that confidence… Avowed ignorance on the topic is not an excuse for the overall disparagement of Trump, petty jabs and the argument from dubious authority (Hudson? Sachs? I appreciate the first, but I never forget he is a Marxian economist; I appreciate the second, but never forget that he is a self-avowed social-democrat). The premise of the entire shaky discoursive construction is that tariffs are taxes, presumably to establish some rightist-libertarian credentials for the argument. The premise is false. I will copy-paste here the main parts of an obscure X thread I wrote in response to Rand Paul’s identical premise. I invite the interested reader to see more here https://twitter.com/altnimeni/status/1907726079403397608, continued here (with charts of market reaction) https://x.com/altnimeni/status/1907850895074930838.

[quote begins]

1/ Tarrifs are NOT taxes.
They say death taxes i.e. implacable + sapping the root of productive life.
Tariffs are neither: they rearrange the structure of consumption. There is choice here, not the point of a gun!

2/ ‘Free trade’ was never free.
‘Free trade’ was always managed trade: not the world becomes like USA, US became like 3rd world (destruction of industry & middle class).
Look at the paradoxical effect: Trump threatens tariffs, tariffs are abolished, and the trade gets trully free!

3/ Free internal market is what matters.
If free of regulation&taxes, deep&diversified then a. people are richer, b. consumption choice exists, c. prices go down, d. everybody will want to produce and sell there => abolish IRS, re-privatize & deregulate (kudos @SecScottBessent)

4/ Tariffs cure the state’s obsession with ‘exports’ which:
a. favor economic centralism, b. privileges exporters, c. feed exchange rate manipulations, d. substract consumption from people Ceausescu’s Romania!
Trump tariffs force nations to focus on internal freedom & plenty.

5/ ‘Guilt’ by association. a. @RandPaul repeats the abstract libertarian handbook w/ little reflection (kudos @jeffreyatucker). b. If none of the above convince him, then he should ask himself how he ended up on the same side as RINOs & dems, aka The Socialist-Liberal Uniparty.

You do not make people rich by cheap imports: you just make a world of WalMart floor workers. People get rich by the above, esp. 3/. If 3/ is real, the net effect is deflationary, although particular items might increase in price. I 🤍@RandPaul @RonPaul so I wrote w/ regret.

I am populist libertarian who cannot stand irreflexive dogmatism. There is a lot going between the lines of this tight argument. For those interested in the minutiae of the pitfalls of libertarianism, @jeffreyatucker has a superb material from 2024: https://t.co/exzrdBgHX8

From a-c here https://twitter.com/altnimeni/status/1908446183686889528
and 1-5 here https://twitter.com/altnimeni/status/1907726079403397608
and here https://twitter.com/altnimeni/status/1908495431157621217
=> #tariffsARENOTtaxes #tariffsARENOTinflationary #DeflationISNOTrecession #TariffsAreGood #TrumpIsRight

[quote ends]

Rand Paul’s obstinacy made me interject in a direct reply: “#TariffsARENOTtaxes ! This is a fundamental mistake! See argument thread [link above]. This is grave, as it conflates choice (tariffed goods) w/ coercion (taxes). The logical fallacy is so blatant that I am wondering cui bono?!…”

Rand Paul pretends to be a student of libertarianism, fine. So, in his case, the suspicion was rather justified. Ron Unz does not pretend that. Which makes me wonder about a different thing: how can he totally throw Trump under the bus on some aspect which he admitedly does not understand? I keep a hawkish eye on Trump’s politics and I measure his actions against a populist-libertarian yardstick. I do not like the trampling of free speech in campuses – but from this, to draw a parallel with Mao’s destruction of higher education?! a. To begin with, higher education is way over-rated and to a large extent responsible for the mess the world is in: a little shaking of this particular tree (federal government getting out of funding it) is mostly welcome and long overdue. I am not so enamored with my credentials as to become incapable to recognize this. b. Then, to equate Trump’s _premises_ with Mao’s? C’mon… c. Granted, the angle (freedom of conscience as it pertains to semitism) is indeed dubious but then, so is Trump’s zionism in general, one of the major drawbacks of his administration. We shall see where he ends up with it and I suspect (or rather hope) that it will not be in the place most observers expect him to arrive at.

Same for the argument from the ‘authority’ of the market: which markets? Those addicted for decades to easy money and monetary malversations?! They react as one would expect an addict to react to withdrawal. In the ‘a-c’ Xposts linked above (https://twitter.com/altnimeni/status/1908446183686889528) I have several observations about the market, but that is beyond the purpose of me stopping by and reacting…

I am sorry that I had to be so critical, but I believe the subject warrants it. Thank you for your public service, Mr. Unz.

*

Comment 2025.04.04 (2), in reply to @BrooLidd

BrooLidd says:
April 7, 2025 at 11:13 am GMT • 400 Words
https://www.unz.com/runz/president-donald-trump-and-chairman-mao/?showcomments#comment-7069883
https://web.archive.org/web/20250512075639/https://www.unz.com/runz/president-donald-trump-and-chairman-mao/?showcomments#comment-7069883

    …tariffs are obviously taxes…

No. Tariffs can be construed as taxes. They are themselves a means of securing the independence of a nation, the sovereignty of a nation.

Let’s reintroduce into the discussion two key concepts our overlords hate and succeeded in eliminating from public discourse. Let’s rehabilitate ‘protectionism’ and ‘isolationism.’

Before we consider Trump’s tariff policy, let’s demand that the chattering class explain to us why we should not protect our people’s jobs, and why we should enmesh ourselves in the affairs of foreign nations.

The chief argument against Trump’s tariffs is that they will cause job loss and massive inflation in the US. That’s obviously true. It’s also true that as we reindustrialize, bit by bit, step by step, more jobs and better paying jobs will counteract those initial losses… and restore our self respect.

Trump should address the nation seriously and in the right venues, explaining the hardship that must be endured for a period.

Few people alive today remember what it was like pre-globalization. I do. Here’s the big difference between now and then: people had less stuff. People didn’t have closets bursting with clothes and shoes. They didn’t have multiple television sets and telephones. They weren’t drowning in a sea of multi-colored plastic junk.

Can the American people be weaned from multi-colored plastic junk? The answer is… NO! This is going to be a bloodbath.

Jack Kerouac’s mother worked in a shoe factory her entire adult life… making shoes! Can you imagine?! Every shoe I owned as a boy and young man was made in the US. Only the wealthy, the Neiman Marcus shoppers, wore Italian shoes.

So what? Jack Kerouac’s mother had a job. She wasn’t on welfare. She had self respect.

My acquaintance Robert is living in his pickup now, with his two dogs. He lost his job due primarily to the influx of Mexican illegals in the city where I live. American cities are filled with Roberts. Our elites despise them. Affluent whites despise them. Affluence turns people into monsters. That’s the horrible, bitter truth.

People must have work. Decent work. Factories provide work not just for ‘peasants,’ as Anglin calls them, but for engineers, designers, IT staff, salesmen, janitors.

Why can’t we have our factories back?

My reply:

@BrooLidd
https://www.unz.com/runz/president-donald-trump-and-chairman-mao/?showcomments#comment-7070127
https://web.archive.org/web/20250512075639/https://www.unz.com/runz/president-donald-trump-and-chairman-mao/?showcomments#comment-7070127

N.B. This comment by Outis, the platform asks me to post Anon, in spite of the invitation to introduce ‘A Name or SIMPLE Pseudonymic Handle’ [sic!]

Thanks for these examples and for remaining sympathetic to the human story.
They show the unbelievable degree of dehumanization drawning our world today. This results from a. all-pervasive philosophical materialism (or, should I say, _ideological_ materialism, for there is nothing philosophical about its dogmatic bigotry); b. Keynesian economics and its ‘aggregates’ which considers human beings fungible (contrast with Austrian economics, characterized by methodological individualism and seeing economic action as purposeful); c. two mechanized world wars, probably also enforced by the narrative of the holocaust, with its insistence (false, I hope, from what I learn on this site) on industrial scale, cold calculative murder…

I can still hardly believe that Trump and the people around him (Bessent is fresh in mind from appearences over the weekend) have remained, with all their plentyful lives, so humane and warm hearted. That Vance remained faithful to his own, in spite of success, fortune and education (see a little text I wrote in homage to him in the aftermath of the Munich speech https://anotepad.com/notes/yaikk6jf).


II.

Ron Paul, 'Liberation or Obliteration?'

Comment 2025.04.08
https://www.unz.com/rpaul/liberation-or-obliteration/#comment-7072178
IA https://web.archive.org/web/20250512085800/https://www.unz.com/rpaul/liberation-or-obliteration/#comment-7072178

Comment by Outis.

First time that I remember in almost two decades that I am so deeply disappointed in Ron Paul. I don’t know what kind of blindness prevents him and Rand to see the enormous good in Trump’s tariffs: I prefer to believe that it is dogmatic libertarianism, and not the drop in the value of the stock market… How can RP even mention it when he taught us a lot about inflation of asset values, of monetary policy leading to that, of how _fake_ the mechanics behing artificial valuations are?…
Just as much as tariffs are _not_ taxes, neither are tariffs _inflationary_: of all people, Ron Paul should know that!

See the thread selectively posted in a different comment here (https://www.unz.com/runz/president-donald-trump-and-chairman-mao/#comment-7069894). From the same thread, not reproduced yet:

“The market fights @realDonaldTrump and does not trust tariffs: understandable after decades of inflationary gorging of the market levels.”

“Long time since markets stopped correcting political & monetary folly turning into easy money casinos. Reshuffling. Main Street up / Wall Street down, end of financialization, scam of ‘service economy’, neverending dependency on the CCP”

“Global oil prices sink after Trump #tariffs
Excellent! Dis-inflation at work:
a. speculative inflationary ‘always-up’ markets re-value
b. cost of factors downstream from energy down -> prices down
c. more money in ppl pockets
Economic growth can begin.”

“Everywhere the same careless language re. ‘inflation’. Inflation is a monetary phenomenon, implying deliberate devaluation of the currency and uniform increase in price of all assets from eggs to stocks. But not every price increase is ‘inflation’!”

“Only important things for the people: more & better jobs @ home, cheap stuff (see oil, stocks), money in pockets, savings.
#Tariffs -> DISINFLATION NOT recession!”

• Agree: Achmed E. Newman
• Replies: @Truth Vigilante