The Atlantic: Hitler Loved Tariffs Too!

HITLER HITLER HITLER. 

The left is obsessed with comparing Donald Trump with Adolf Hitler. That’s not news, of course. They have been doing it since 2016, and the mere fact that it is ridiculous on its face is no barrier to their continuing to do so. 

The Atlantic, the once-great magazine that Lauren Powell Jobs has turned into nonstop Trump hatred propaganda, is the worst offender in the elite media, and because the magazine retains the gloss of respectability it acquired from its former greatness, it has helped create a reflex in the center-left to see every Trump move through the lens of evil. 

The latest article in this genre is particularly stupid. 

Hitler used tariffs to “liberate” Germany from a globalized world order—careening the economy backwards, Timothy W. Ryback writes. https://t.co/8YWAxPbPfz

— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) April 26, 2025

Tying the “Hitler” accusation to Trump once again by implying that only authoritarians love tariffs is insane on its face, and requires a level of economic ignorance that is possible in the elite readers of The Atlantic solely because the American education system–from K-12 through graduate school–trains people to idiocy. 

It IS true that Hitler loved tariffs, and that is because he believed in autarky–complete economic self-sufficiency. To compare Trump’s use of tariffs to force better trade deals–in most cases, FREER trade deals–is, on its face, absurd. As is the link between tariffs per se and authoritarianism. Every European country admired by readers of The Atlantic imposes quite a number of tariffs, and that doesn’t seem to bother anybody on the left.  It’s only when Trump does it. 

But the greater irony is that, while I think Hitler’s economic policies were terrible, they actually mirror the socialist mixed-economy model favored by the left. And, in an even more bizarre twist of fate, they–until the war–accomplished exactly what Hitler promised. American elites loved Hitler and his economic policies pre-war. 

When Hitler came to power, unemployment was the highest in Europe at 30%; five years later, it basically didn’t exist. 

Granted, Hitler accomplished that goal through temporarily successful policies of rearmament and creating enormous debt–similar in kind to the money-printing of the past 5 years that propped up the economy, sort of, during and post-COVID. 

In other words, of all Hitler’s economic and other sins, tariffs fall very low on the list. We all hate Hitler because he was a genocidal warmonger, not because his economic policies didn’t work. In many ways, the Democrats’ hero, FDR, did much worse until he adopted, ironically, Hitler’s economic policies during the war. A mixed, government-directed economy driven by rapidly escalating debt. And while tariffs weren’t exactly a problem during the war, something much worse for trade was at work: the damn war, where nobody was exactly involved in trading consumer goods. 

In other words, this may be the most stupid and historically illiterate comparison in a long line of stupid and historically illiterate comparisons of Trump and Hitler. 

Surprising, isn’t it?