On September 5, 2016, Michael Anton wrote an essay that was seismic in its domestic effect.
It was “The Flight 93 Election.” Published under the nom de plume Publius Decius Mus (Anton was later revealed to be the author). It asserted the election of Donald Trump was a national imperative. Not a guarantee of any sort. But a Hail Mary pass necessary if we had any hope of saving the nation:
“2016 is the Flight 93 election: charge the cockpit or you die. You may die anyway.
“You – or the leader of your party – may make it into the cockpit and not know how to fly or land the plane. There are no guarantees.
“Except one: if you don’t try, death is certain….
“One of the paradoxes – there are so many – of conservative thought over the last decade at least is the unwillingness even to entertain the possibility that America and the West are on a trajectory toward something very bad.
“On the one hand, conservatives routinely present a litany of ills plaguing the body politic….Conservatives spend at least several hundred million dollars a year on think-tanks, magazines, conferences, fellowships, and such, complaining about this, that, the other, and everything….
“(I)f they are right about the importance of all this to national health and even survival, then they must believe – mustn’t they? – that we are headed off a cliff.
“But it’s quite obvious that conservatives don’t believe any such thing, that they feel no such sense of urgency, of an immediate necessity to change course and avoid the cliff….
“(T)hese same conservatives are, at root, keepers of the status quo.”
I wish I knew Mr. Anton. Because I would love to discuss with him this IDENTICAL conservative cognitive dissonance on display right now with regard to Trump Trade.
The Globalist trade status quo has been AWFUL for the United States. For many, MANY decades. DC has happily served as the world’s butcher. Slicing up the US and selling it by the pound to the rest of the world. Via multinational corporations with ZERO loyalty to the nation that made their beyond-avarice-wealth possible.
Aren’t Conservatives supposed to be the patriotic ones? Anton’s Cognitive Dissonance Conservatives have spent these decades…defending this titanic US sell out. In defense of a fake “free trade” that exists only in their minds.
Except they’ll even admit that these US-sell-out companies are given all sorts of anti-free trade advantages in the nations to which they’ve moved. By countries willing to do anything to damage the US.
They’ll say: “Let them tariff and subsidize. It hurts them – not us.”
Obviously. Not.
What follows is the reality:
Company X relocates from the US to Country Y. Thereby becoming a de facto Country Y company.
Country Y imposes massive tariffs and import limits upon imports from the US. Thereby advantaging Company X in selling its products in Country Y.
Country Y also mass subsidies Company X. Which allows Company X to artificially lower their prices. Company X then floods the US with their fake free trade lower prices. Which undercuts their US competitors.
Oh: And Company X lobbies DC for MORE US taxes and regulations. Because it doesn’t affect them – they’re in Country Y. But it does affect their US competitors.
Lather, rinse, repeat for many decades? And there are MANY MILLIONS of Company Xs. (Re)Located everywhere on the planet – except the US.
This ongoing, rolling Globalist screw-job is what passes for “free trade” in DC. This is the alleged “prosperity” we are all allegedly enjoying. Except DC is $36+ trillion in debt. It’s not prosperity – it’s decades of financed idiocy.
And Anton’s Cognitive Dissonance Conservatives? Having watched for decades the US’s economy and heartland be eviscerated by all this fake free trade? Are somehow yet again defending the failed status quo. Their motto seems to be “More!!! Harder!!!”
I say: Let Trump charge the cockpit. Let him tariff the crap out of everyone. Because one thing is guaranteed: “If you don’t try, death is certain.”
We’re broke. And broken. And swamped with record debt – publicly and privately. What the heck have we got to lose?
Admittedly, Trump is attempting a moonshot. But as Neil Armstrong and Company pointed out – moonshots aren’t an impossibility. In fact, I think this one is actually doable. And rather rapidly.
Trump is trying to simultaneously reset pretty much every aspect of the US economy. Trade, jobs, taxes, regulations, immigration…everything.
There is a real method to the alleged madness. We are still (barely) the world’s largest economy. But it is more than enough leverage to nation-by-nation right the very many trade wrongs to which we’ve been subjected. Tariffs are the way to begin those long-overdue conversations.
Tariffs are also restoring some reality to government-inflated global stock markets. Which in the US will mean a shift of investment from stocks to treasuries. Which will mean more global value for those treasuries. Which means renegotiating the US’s $36+ trillion debt gets cheaper (and remains possible).
Tariffs – along with reductions in domestic taxes and massive reductions in regulations and government (thank you, DOGE)? Will bring back US manufacturing and other businesses.
The new gigs at the new US businesses – combined with clearing out the tens of millions of illegal aliens – will mean more jobs and higher wages for US citizens.
Which will mean more taxes paid by more US citizens to the the US government.
Which means we might one day start actually dealing with the $36+ trillion debt.
The Cognitive Dissonance Conservatives? Defending the Globalist trade status quo? Are objecting to Trump Trade – just as they objected to Trump in the first place.
Because they have apparently learned nothing in the last decade.