The truth is that President Donald Trump’s tariff hikes are hitting Americans in all sorts of ways. Some importers and other businesses are trying to eat the added cost of those taxes (which shows up in the form of reduced profits), while others are passing the tax along the supply chain. The tariffs are also discouraging investments, disrupting international mail services, and causing chaos in various markets.
While the exact contours of the tariffs’ impact might take many forms, the cost is ultimately borne by people—just like with any tax. The Yale Budget Lab estimates that the average American household will pay approximately $2,400 in tariff costs this year. That won’t show up as a lump sum like a property tax bill or be easily seen like the income tax withholdings on your pay stub, but the costs are still real, even if they are less obviously seen.
It’s an interesting story how economics came to be known as the dismal science. Many assume it’s because of too much mathematics, or boring theories that can make students fall asleep in class. But that’s not the true story. The phrase was coined by Thomas Carlyle because economists opposed slavery. They believed that all human beings share the same motivations — what Adam Smith called the “propensity to truck, barter, and exchange” — regardless of race or nationality. As Deirdre McCloskey put it: “The phrase ‘the dismal science’ was coined by Thomas Carlyle not because economics was gloomy or mathematical — but because economists opposed slavery. That made their science dismal — in Carlyle’s eyes.”
The basic facts of supply and demand weren’t pleasant to extremists then, and still aren’t. Carlyle first used the term in his essay Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question, where he mocked economics for explaining the world with such “simplistic” tools as supply and demand. Did he offer a better alternative? No — but he worried that a world governed by price theory would reduce “the duty of human governors” to “letting men alone.”
One may call it simplistic, dismal, or even cold, but the simple idea of price theory — letting people decide for themselves — has been a guardian of liberty from the time of Hume and Smith to today. And “letting men alone” has never pleased social engineers or those who want a “mission-driven” economy. Letting men alone to take their own decisions, make up their own minds, and conduct exchange with each other isn’t pleasant for those who think people aren’t smart, moral, and worthy enough to make their own decisions, so they need the visible hand of the state to guide them. This social engineering mindset that echoes itself in anti-economics rhetoric is closer to totalitarian ideologies than the idea of “letting men alone.”
My intrepid Mercatus Center colleague, Veronique de Rugy, notes the injustice of EV mandates.
Peter Earle writes wisely about economic statistics.
Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley Strassel decries the vile practice of lawfare that was started by Democrats and accelerated and sharpened by Trump. Here’s her conclusion:
Generations of leaders understood the risk of criminalizing political acts and creating a prosecutorial race to the bottom. No longer. We’re there now. Congrats, D.C. What a skill to have honed.
John O. McGinnis is correct: “Universities need more reason — less ‘expression.'”
