Glenn Beck: ‘I was wrong’ about Trump’s tariffs — here’s why he flipped

It’s been a little over a year since President Trump began his second term and enacted a wave of tariffs that rattled the global economy. After observing the impacts, Glenn Beck is finally ready to say three words: “I was wrong.”

For years, he opposed tariffs, believing that free markets were the answer. And while he still believes free markets are the ideal — as they’re “not just efficient” but also “moral” — he realizes in retrospect that they cease to work when the players cheat. Tariffs, he admits, are “not a sin” but a necessary “strategy” to protect American industry from nations that are attacking its economy through trade.

On this episode of “The Glenn Beck Program,” Glenn explains his change of heart.

He first recaps history: America’s founders funded the government mainly through tariffs instead of income taxes, and Abraham Lincoln and early Republicans used them to protect young industries and build the nation into an industrial powerhouse. Tariffs only got a bad name after the 1913 income tax shift and the 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariffs (blamed for worsening the Depression), while post-World War II free trade succeeded because the U.S. dominated the global economy.

But that era of “effortlessness, American dominance” has ended.

“Here’s what I failed to see,” says Glenn. “Free trade works when all of the players are playing free. … It works when your trading partners are not subsidizing industries, manipulating currencies, stealing intellectual property, weaponizing supply chains, using slave labor.”

“There comes a time when you then have to look at it and say, ‘OK, wait a minute, wait a minute — now we own the markets, but everybody else has weaponized trade against us. And now we’re hollowing out our own industrial base; we’re financing our adversaries’ rise,’” he adds.

Today he sees “the bigger picture that Donald Trump is doing with tariffs.”

“I have had very long conversations with the president about tariffs. He has been remarkable … because he’s been honest,” says Glenn.

“He has the vision to see the world economically as it truly is, but also the vision to see economically, business-wise, how it can be,” he explains.

“[Trump] understood tariffs are not just punishment and higher prices, OK? You use tariffs strategically as leverage, as negotiation — tariffs as industrial policy without the bureaucracy; tariffs used strategically, not universally; tariffs used as a tool to bring trading partners to the table; tariffs being used to build domestic capacity.”

Glenn highlights Trump’s repeated claim that foreign countries have committed to investing $18 trillion in U.S. factories since the start of his second term (roughly half the national debt).

“Let’s say half of that is true. That’s pretty remarkable. You know what that will do? That will rebuild our industrial base, which we hollowed out because we didn’t have tariffs!” he exclaims.

To hear more, watch the video above.

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