Trump tariffs
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The Trump tariffs are the duties imposed by Donald Trump on, in John Kiriakou's description, "literally all of the country's trading partners." Kiriakou's assessment is that Trump "has shaken up the economy more and in a shorter period of time than really any previous president over the past couple of generations": the tariffs "have caused chaos in global stock markets," "have laid the groundwork for inflation and economic contraction" and "have led to political upheaval here in the United States." Other presidents have threatened and imposed tariffs, he notes, but not at this level, "we haven't seen them in generations."

Struck down in part

By April 2026 the tariffs had been through the courts, and Kiriakou summarised the outcome as a defeat with a consolation attached: "the Supreme Court ruled that most of these tariffs were unconstitutional, that the Constitution specifically says that only Congress has the ability to levy tariffs. But, they did throw the administration a bone by allowing the Trump administration temporary emergency tariff powers."

Richard D. Wolff, asked how damaging the tariffs had been to the wider economy, gave an answer that cut against the attention they had received: "they're they're not very" damaging. Tariffs are an old punitive mechanism, in the same family as sanctions, and countries have been applying them to one another for centuries, long enough that people have learned "how to evade them, avoid them, negate them, undermine them." They raise costs and are unwanted, "but they are not anywhere near as powerful as the politicians who use them."

That gap between the instrument and the noise around it is what Wolff thought the episode was really about. Much of Washington, he said, is "carefully choreographed political theater", a demonstration that "I can put a tariff on you like Thor", and it is the only way he could account for a president running the risk of a constitutional challenge rather than asking a Congress his own party controlled and which would have given him the authority.

The McKinley precedent

Kiriakou raises William McKinley as the closest American precedent: McKinley "imposed these huge tariffs," "crashed the economy," and was later killed by an assassin, Kiriakou is careful to add that the assassination "didn't have anything to do with tariffs." His question from that precedent is why, given that political leaders "aren't all stupid" and some understand the history, there has been silence and an absence of leadership. Richard D. Wolff answered that the behaviour is "a sign of desperation", "you don't do these kinds of things if you're not desperate", and that an adult response would have been to sit down with the rest of the world, through the United Nations or otherwise, and negotiate an adjustment.

A tax by another name

Wolff's analysis, offered on Kiriakou's programme, is that a tariff is a tax paid by Americans rather than by foreigners: the importer pays the duty to the United States government and then tries to push the cost onto the retail customer, so that the price of imported wine, suits, electronics, coffee and sugar rises. He expects inflation to follow as the tariffs take effect, and notes that the world's other governments woke up to a tax problem imposed by a president they did not elect, leaving the United States, in his words, "disliked on a scale we haven't seen for half a century."

Kiriakou also pressed him on whether tariffs would do anything for the rust belt states where Trump has promised to bring manufacturing back. Wolff's answer was that the last eight presidents all made that promise and none delivered on it, and that the only thing that would make American manufacturing competitive with Asia, Africa and Latin America is pressing American wages down toward theirs.

See also

- Donald Trump
- Richard D. Wolff
- Youngstown Sheet and Tube
- China as economic threat
- John Kiriakou
