To the Editor:
I wrote in a letter to the Herald about how the different wage levels between the U.S. and most foreign countries makes it improbable that they will relocate factories to the U.S. In fact, since Trump took office, the U.S. has lost approximately 70,000 manufacturing jobs, 22,000 in August alone, and our trade deficit rose to $100 billion last month.
Seemingly, Trump’s Republican base isn’t even aware of the problem, that is, the problem that Americans either don’t have the skills or the mind-set to adopt work habits to compete with many countries in the world on a cost and quality basis, so Trump can boast of deals requiring other countries to set up manufacturing in the U.S., but it probably won’t happen to any appreciable extent with American workers.
Trump pretends not to see that, although it should be obvious to anyone with a modicum of intelligence and open eyes. After all, there was a documented lack of manufacturing employment gain due to his first term’s tariffs. So why don’t Republican politicians see that tariffs don’t produce domestic manufacturing?
Because tariffs, which our companies pay for import goods, go into federal coffers, which helps to offset the deficit that is produced each year by the tax cuts to the rich that Trump and supporters provided in his “One Big Beautiful Bill.”
America’s national debt has already reached a staggering $37 trillion as of August (1/5 of it created by Trump’s first four-year term alone!), representing approximately 124% of the nation’s gross domestic product – levels not seen since World War II.
More troubling, the Congressional Budget Office projects the debt-to-GDP ratio will climb 16% to an astonishing $42 trillion by 2028 unless the giveaway to the rich created by that bill is offset by tariff revenues.
And guess who pays those tariffs? As Trump’s ex-economic adviser, Gary Cohn, pointed out, “Poorer people end up paying a disproportionate percentage of the tariffs.”
But the other side of the question remains, who benefits most from the debt created by that bill? Well, the Congressional Budget Office says that the lower 40% of income earners would lose about 4% of their after-tax income, but the top 1% of incomes would gain about 3% for theirs.
So, essentially Jeff Van Drew’s vote for the One Big Beautiful Bill clinched a massive transfer of wealth from the poorer to the richer, but the massive federal debt incurred will be disguised by tariff revenues, which will mainly be paid by the lower 60% of our people.
Trump is a notorious junk salesman, hawking everything from sneakers to watches to Bibles, but I don’t think we’ve ever seen anyone pull a scam this huge on the U.S. as a whole. He couldn’t have done this one without the help of grifting Republican allies.
Will this colossal scam dissolve if the Supreme Court voids those tariffs? Maybe. I hope so, but given the ability of the know-nothing Republican Congress to pass legally similar tariffs, I wouldn’t lay money on it.
Bruce Allen, Del Haven
