A large body of research associates more economic freedom in general and trade freedom in particular with better outcomes like higher income, faster growth, less poverty, and greater life satisfaction. The U.S. has long been near the top of the list, which helps explain an extraordinarily high standard of living: U.S. median income is nearly nine times the global average and its poverty rate is about one-fortieth the global rate.
The U.S. economy has outperformed that of every country Trump claims rip Americans off. And yet his tariffs undermine the economic freedom upon which this prosperity was built.
The U.S. helped invent the low-tariff world by negotiating multilateral and bilateral free trade agreements after World War II. Those that embraced free trade have prospered. Among the 15 countries with the lowest tariff rates in the world, gross domestic product per person is $43,500 a year. In the 15 countries with the highest tariff rates, it is only $9,700.
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The long-run costs of this backsliding may be steep. Research shows that once countries limit what their own citizens and firms may buy from abroad, they are more likely to limit other economic freedoms. We are already seeing some indication of this.
Since launching the trade war, the president has relentlessly pushed the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates. If the Fed cuts rates too quickly and too soon, inflation can easily return, undermining the U.S. commitment to sound money and, with it, its people’s economic freedom.
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Americans represent just 4.2% of the world’s population and produce more than 26% of global GDP. This prosperity was built on a foundation of economic freedom. Thanks to Trump’s trade war, that freedom is measurably eroding.
Still, Mr. Trump’s claim that reducing illegal immigration would boost employment hasn’t borne out. The economy added just 22,000 new jobs in August—well below forecasts. Monthly job creation over the past four months has averaged just 27,000. By contrast, monthly job gains last year averaged 167,000. Meanwhile the unemployment rate has risen to its highest level in nearly four years. If, as Mr. Trump maintains, less migration is a boon for U.S. workers, where’s the payoff?
Unemployment hasn’t simply risen in general. It’s also up among young people, older workers and the groups Mr. Trump told us would gain the most from his immigration crackdown. “The racial gap in the labor market is widening,” the Journal reported, citing Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The black unemployment rate has risen to 7.5%, the highest since October 2021. Economists consider rising unemployment among blacks “a potential warning sign for the broader labor market,” according to the Journal, because black workers “are more likely to hold low-skilled or entry level jobs, which are often cut first when the economy weakens.”
Is a basic understanding of the First Amendment too much to expect from the nation’s Attorney General? Progressives have spent years trying to create and define a category called “hate speech.” This misunderstanding of the First Amendment seems to have infiltrated the D.C. water supply because AG Pam Bondi repeated it Monday in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
Discussing Kirk’s work on college campuses, Ms. Bondi mentioned the “disgusting” antisemitism on display at many universities, and so far so good. But wait. “There’s free speech and then there’s hate speech, and there is no place—especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie, in our society,” the country’s top law enforcer told a podcast. “We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.”
Kirk would want a word. “My position is that even hate speech should be completely and totally allowed in our country. The most disgusting speech should absolutely be protected,” he once told a crowd. “The ACLU used to hold this viewpoint. The American Civil Liberties Union, they sued so that legitimate Nazis could march through downtown Skokie.”
Why? “As soon as you use the word ‘hate,’ that is a very subjective term,” Kirk said, in a video posted by his group in 2020. “Then all of a sudden it is in the eyes, or it is in the implementation, of whomever has the power.”
But now parts of the right are demanding a government clampdown after Charlie Kirk’s assassination. They’d be wise to remember Kirk’s own words. “Hate speech does not exist legally in America,” he wrote in 2024. “There’s ugly speech. There’s gross speech. There’s evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment.” Kirk’s legacy is honored through political debate, not government censorship that he deplored.
George Will, with good reason, describes Trump as “a seamlessly unserious president.” A slice:
In 2006, Whirlpool paid $1.7 billion to buy its largest competitor (Maytag) and said competition from foreign producers would prevent it from wielding unseemly market power. But U.S. consumers continued to like imported machines’ prices and qualities. So, early in his first term, President Donald Trump imposed tariffs on washing machines to protect Whirlpool from the competition it had said it welcomed. In August 2020, Trump visited a Whirlpool factory where, strangely, he bragged about imposing tariffs on Canadian aluminum, raising Whirlpool’s manufacturing costs.
Now, the Wall Street Journal reports, Whirlpool says perfidious foreigners are fibbing, paying lower tariffs by claiming low values on appliance imports, valuations not reflected in prices charged to U.S. consumers. Presumably the government will deftly untangle the mess its protectionism has produced.
Meanwhile, protectionism’s caroms are costly for the largest U.S. manufacturer of agricultural machinery. John Deere, the New York Times reports, expects higher steel and aluminum tariffs to add $600 million to this year’s manufacturing costs. And because China retaliated for Trump’s tariffs with tariffs on soybeans, U.S. exports of this crop are down 51 percent and $3.4 billion from 2024. So, growers will buy fewer John Deere machines.
Andrew Biggs offers this counsel: “Don’t trust Census Bureau poverty numbers for seniors.”
If you want to know what political cowardice, short-term thinking, and economic unseriousness look like, look no further than France.
Last week, Prime Minister François Bayrou became the third premier in a little more than a year to fall in Paris, toppled by a legislature unwilling to accept even modest restraint on runaway spending. France’s debt is projected to reach 116 percent of GDP this year. Annual government outlays are nearing 60 percent of GDP. Yet the National Assembly will not even pretend to consider actual cuts.
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Americans, however, should not be smug. This same disease has long infected Washington. It has gotten to the point that our leaders are even proving unable to do the easiest thing in politics: nothing.
The clearest case is the so-called “COVID credits” in Obamacare. These were temporary sweeteners to the Affordable Care Act’s premium tax credits, first enacted during the pandemic and extended through 2025. They did two big things. First, they eliminated the income cap, so even affluent families — for example, a family of 4 earning around $130,000 — could qualify for taxpayer subsidies. Second, they vastly increased the size of the credit, so that households between 100 and 150 percent of the poverty level pay nothing for coverage, while taxpayers cover the entire premium.
