A Simple Question For Trump Critics – What’s the Viable Alternative To Tariffs?

It doesn’t seem to matter where you turn in the resistance media. The Liberation Day tariffs handed down by Donald Trump, they will tell you ad nauseum, are going to be the cause of our ruin. The global markets are in freefall, and if only we had gone a different direction last November, none of this would have happened. 

Here’s the problem. A large part of the reason Donald Trump was elected to his second term as president was because he convinced a majority of the country that the economic status quo was not sustainable. He made the case time and time again in the swing states at rallies, in the debates, and on television, radio, and podcast interviews. The message resonated, because instinctively, Americans know we can’t keep racking up these trillion-plus dollar deficits while simultaneously hollowing out the engine of our GDP by transitioning to a service economy instead of a manufacturing economy. 

Very few people on the right are fans of tariffs. Trust me, I’ve seen all the videos by Milton Friedman, Paul Volcker, Ronald Reagan, and Thomas Sowell. Even fewer people understand them and what they can do if used effectively. I just look at the big board – the deficit annually and the cumulative U.S. national debt, and keep coming back to the big question – if not tariffs, then what? 

Lots of countries have faced serious fiscal crises over the years, and have deployed differing measures of austerity to combat them. In the United Kingdom, after the global 2008 economic crash, a series of policies were implemented that by October, 2010, included this, from the New York Times. 

The austerity programme included reductions in welfare spending, the cancellation of school building programs, reductions in local government funding, and an increase in VAT. Spending on the police, courts and prisons was also reduced.

Spending cuts not just in discretionary spending, but in welfare programs and educational money. Fewer cops, courts, and prisons. Look at the crime wave in London today and ask yourself if this was the best way out for the Brits. By the way, that VAT increase? That includes an extra tax or tariff without calling it one on U.S. imports into the U.K. This was their way of dumping part of the financial burden on you and me,, their treasured ally.

As of right now, U.S. debt to GDP is at 122%. That’s untenable long term. The previous four years of the Biden regency exploded the yearly deficit compared to Donald Trump’s first term. The one-year spike of 2020 on Trump’s watch was the COVID year when everything ground to a halt globally, and a ton of money had to be spent in order to restart the engines again. That was a black swan event. Biden’s economic policies never recovered from that event. We’ve been hemorrhaging cash ever since. 

Its posts like these that need a deeper dive. Budget deficits under Trump’s first term were:

2017 – $665B
2018 – $779B
2019 – $984B
2020 – $3.13T (COVID blowout)

Under Biden

2021 – $2.8T
2022- $1.375T
2023 – $1.695T
2024 – $1.8T

Step function. @SecScottBessent @elonmusk https://t.co/NqdrXeWVR2

— 🇺🇸 Kyle Bass 🇹🇼 (@Jkylebass) March 17, 2025

By far, the biggest driver of debt, both yearly and long-term, continues to be the Big Three entitlement programs – Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. Without severe cuts to those programs – higher retirement age, means testing, reduced coverage and higher taxes on income on the front end, there’s not much else you can do to solve the debt problem, even if you take discretionary spending basically to zero. 

So we can jaw about the fiscal crisis in this country that has deepened over the past four years, or we can look at alternatives. That’s exactly what Donald Trump is doing with the tariffs. 

Yes, the stock market losses are real to those who had to cash out or rely on it for immediate retirement income. To most in the market, it’s a paper loss. It’s not real until cashed out and realized. In six months, if Trump’s plan works and the foreign investments and resulting job growth here, the increased energy production, and if Congress passes a permanent tax cut, the market might hit 50,000, and the past month would be a distant memory. But let’s look at what’s really happening underneath all the current wailing and gnashing of teeth by Anti-Trump, Inc.

Going back to 2005, when the trade began to go negative after being a surplus in 2000, we see a growing negative trend. 

• 2005: -$318 billion  

• 2006: -$248 billion  

• 2007: -$161 billion  

• 2008: -$459 billion  

• 2009: -$1.413 trillion

• 2010: -$1.294 trillion

• 2011: -$1.3 trillion

• 2012: -$1.077 trillion

• 2013: -$680 billion  

• 2014: -$485 billion  

• 2015: -$442 billion  

• 2016: -$585 billion  

• 2017: -$665 billion  

• 2018: -$779 billion  

• 2019: -$984 billion  

• 2020: -$3.132 trillion

• 2021: -$2.772 trillion

• 2022: -$1.375 trillion

• 2023: -$1.695 trillion

• 2024: -$1.833 trillion

Yes, we’re spending a ton on entitlements, but we’re getting absolutely killed on trade. And with that net outflow of dollars over the last couple decades, so, too, went manufacturing jobs, factories, and farms. Trump sees tariffs the opportunity to correct that balance, and reverse a lot of the negative side effects of that trade imbalance. 

.@POTUS: “This is NOT SUSTAINABLE! The United States can’t lose $1.9 trillion on trade … and also spend a lot of money on NATO in order to protect European nations. We cover them with military, then we lose money on trade — the whole thing is crazy.” pic.twitter.com/IzqvCWEFRl

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) April 6, 2025

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in Washington today, set to be the first leader of a foreign country to meet in the White House with Donald Trump specifically about the reciprocal tariffs. Netanyahu announced on April 1st that Israel had already basically taken their tariff regime down to 0%. That’s true on about 98% of stuff. On cars made in the U.S., however, that’s a little different story. If you want a chance to sell U.S. cars in Israel, you have to pay an 83% tariff, and a VAT tax, value-added tax, of 18% on top of that. It nets out to around 118% of the export price of the car. Try competing in that environment. The market in Israel for U.S. cars is all but closed. That’s what Netanyahu and Trump will be meeting about. What do you want to bet Israel adjusts that number significantly this week? 

Argentinian President Javier Milei announced Friday he was taking all the tariffs of U.S. imports off entirely. 

“Argentina has decided to move towards a trade agreement with the United States of America, one under which tariffs and trade barriers will become nothing more than a bad memory of the past” a confirmé Javier Milei lors du gala American Patriots, à Mar-a-Lago hier. pic.twitter.com/YQeZaBOo8h

— Jean Louis (@JL7508) April 4, 2025

Taiwan’s market crashed. They’re going to get pretty desperate, pretty quick. Think they won’t want to make a deal and fairly open up their markets to us? 

You may have missed this in all the Trump bashing, but China’s not had a very good week, either. Their metals markets crashed, along with many other sectors of their economy.

🇨🇳📉#Commodity futures crashed in #China on Monday. Shanghai #silver, #nickel, and #tin fell by 10%, triggered down limit. INE crude oil, #fuel, and asphalt were at the 7% down limit. #Copper -7% to down limit.#Aluminum -6.2%, #zinc -5.5%, #gold -5%, #IronOre -4%, #steel rebars… pic.twitter.com/1FYTRxgEMQ

— CN Wire (@Sino_Market) April 7, 2025

Trump on social media updated people over the weekend about the impact the tariffs were already having on the CCP.

pic.twitter.com/IhZfhFmVJ0

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) April 5, 2025

Speaking to a press gaggle on Air Force One on the ride back to Washington from Florida, Trump continued to show is primary focus is on reorienting trade to help us be in a better position long-term to deal with China. 

.@POTUS on tariffs: “We have to solve our trade deficit … Unless we solve that problem, I’m not going to make a deal.” pic.twitter.com/8gCIegDvxg

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) April 6, 2025

Will all this work? No one can honestly tell you. They can give you an economic dissertation against tariffs until the cows come home. But if tariffs are used as a short-term bludgeon to instigate trade renegotiations, they can be quite the attention getter. Regardless, I come back to the original question. The current status quo is unsustainable. Everyone sentient, which excludes the entirety of the Biden regency, knows this. We can’t just cut around the margins and expect to magically grow our way out of it, although $5 trillion in new outside investment into U.S. manufacturing and infrastructure is a pretty good start if you are a believer in that economic theory. If not tariffs, how else do we get out of the much deeper hole left to us by whomever was running the last administration? 

Let’s just entertain the theory that this year, Elon Musk and his DOGE team hit their goal of cutting a trillion in discretionary spending. Even without taking into account VAT taxes and other non-tariff trade impediments, we’re still underwater in trade by almost $2 trillion as of last year. What if, and obviously a big if, but what if Trump can renegotiate trade deals one at a time, beginning last week with Vietnam and Argentina, this week perhaps with Israel, and then foreign leaders stacking up like planes inbound at O’Hare over the next few weeks? Even if we can’t take the deficit to $0 this year, what if it’s cut in half? Or even cut 25%? Aren’t we then finally bending the arc of our deficit/debt problem? Isn’t that a good thing? 

Of course, Anti-Trump, Inc.’s answer will be that Trump will just claim credit for any new deal, whether it’s of substance or not. Fair enough. Isn’t any improvement better than the path we’re on now? Why wouldn’t we try something different than the road to Hell we’ve been on racing down for two decades? 

This is why Trump’s poll numbers haven’t mirrored the stock market. A lot of people who voted for him elected him to go break the china, literally and figuratively. He just might be setting up the dominos to do that very thing right now. I’m willing to let it play out a bit more before picking up my stones to cast.