Topher McDougal

In early April, the Trump administration announced a sweeping new round of tariffs, targeting imports across a wide array of sectors. These measures, which build on his earlier trade war during his first term, have been roundly described by economists as a mistake. They will likely raise prices for American consumers, disrupt global supply chains, and make U.S. industries less competitive. All of this is true.

But I believe the deeper danger lies not in what these tariffs get wrong about economics, but in what they may get right about politics. The tariffs aren’t bad policy. They are a good way to run the US economy as a mafia business.

In this view, the tariffs are not primarily about protecting American workers or reviving industry or balancing trade deficits or any of the other reasons the Trump administration has variously claimed as their motivation. They are about undermining the very institutions and legal norms that have structured international cooperation for decades—and replacing them with a system that rewards power over principle. That shift carries profound consequences, not just for the global economy, but for the political architecture of the world we live in.

Tariffs have long been part of the U.S. policy toolkit. In the 19th century, they helped fund the federal government and, at times, supported domestic industrialization. But today’s economy is more complex. Global production is distributed, not localized. An American-made component might be sent to Canada for partial assembly, then to Mexico for finishing, then shipped back to the U.S. to be installed in a final product. Tariffs on any leg of this journey raise costs not just for importers, but for American manufacturers and consumers, too.

Economists agree Trump’s new tariffs represent a colossal mistake in many ways:

1. They are based and calculated on a fundamental misunderstanding of tariffs as indexed on trade imbalances.
2. They hobble the global economy – and the U.S. economy most of all. American markets were in free fall after “Liberation Day” – a good indication that a healthy global economy is one that is interconnected, not one Balkanized by competing nationalisms. It has been estimated that the Trump-era tariffs from his first term cost U.S. households hundreds of dollars per year in higher prices. The new tariffs are even broader and steeper, and their cumulative effect promises to be more severe. They could even tip the American economy into recession.
3. They alienate allies and incentive economic bloc formation against the U.S., possibly giving other countries reason to turn toward China as their principal trading partner.
4. They are not strategically designed to promote competitiveness in nascent (or re-nascent) industries – as, for example, Biden-era subsidies for the green economy via the Inflation Reduction Act were, before being rescinded by Trump.
5. They erode the credibility and effectiveness of trade sanctions as a tool of foreign policy (because they’re essentially across-the-board sanctions already).
6. They function as a regressive tax on American households, falling hardest on working- and middle-class families who spend a larger portion of their income on tradable goods like clothing, electronics, and appliances.
7. They weaken global trade institutions (like the WTO) and norms that the U.S. helped to build. 

That’s the liberal case against tariffs. But to stop there is to miss the forest for the trees. These tariffs are also political tools—and increasingly, they are being used to change the way power works.

The first clue is the pattern. The Trump administration has levied tariffs not just on rivals like China, but on long-time allies: Canada, the European Union, Japan. These measures have often been justified under the pretext of “national security” or correcting “unfair” trade balances. But their real effect is to sow distrust among allies and weaken the credibility of U.S. commitments. If cooperation no longer offers stability, why not go it alone?

Undermining trade norms helps clear the field for a world governed less by rules and more by strength. The weakening of the World Trade Organization—an institution long championed by the U.S.—opens the door for powerful states to act unilaterally, without fear of legal consequence. That shift may sound abstract, but its implications are concrete. It makes it easier for militarily strong states (the U.S., China, Russia, and perhaps the E.U. if they can coordinate their actions) to annex territory, rewrite borders, and use economic policy as a tool of coercion.

During his first term, Trump mused about buying Greenland. His administration floated using military force to seize oil fields. His advisors openly questioned the value of NATO. Vice President J.D. Vance has now visited Greenland, and Trump has now said he’s open to the possibility of using force to acquire the territory. He has begun to “joke” about annexing Canada and Panama. These may have sounded like offhand remarks or political theater, but taken together, they reflect a worldview in which military strength, not international cooperation or even diplomatic pressure, is the ultimate currency.

Trade policy fits into this vision. By making firms dependent on government protection, the state gains leverage. It can reward political allies with exemptions or subsidies. It can punish dissenters with exclusion. Over time, private industry becomes an arm of political power, less responsive to market signals and more responsive to executive discretion. That’s not free-market capitalism. It’s something closer to authoritarian crony capitalism.

Historically, we have seen versions of this before. In many countries that pursued import substitution industrialization—a strategy designed to grow domestic industries behind protective tariffs—success often hinged on whether firms were eventually pushed to compete globally. When governments failed to demand performance and instead protected inefficient or politically connected sectors (as in many Latin American countries), corruption and stagnation followed.

The Trump tariffs appear not to be part of a coherent plan to boost manufacturing competitiveness (nor tamp down on fentanyl imports, nor shrink the trade deficit — all variously and contradictorily cited rationales), but rather a strategy to reshape political loyalty. There is no roadmap for phasing out protection, no investment in workforce development, no plan to build globally competitive industries. Instead, the tariffs look backward—to a romanticized past of self-sufficient manufacturing—and ignore the realities of a 21st-century, service- and information-based economy.

Of course, some may argue this analysis attributes too much intentionality. Perhaps these policies are just improvised, incoherent, or ideologically driven. Hanlon’s Razor famously warns: never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity.

But when harmful patterns repeat and accumulate power in predictable ways, we should consider another possibility: that what looks like chaos may in fact be working as designed.

We cannot afford to treat the 2025 tariffs as merely a technical policy misstep. They are part of a broader campaign to redefine how power is exercised—economically, geopolitically, and domestically. As Americans, we must ask not only what these tariffs cost us in dollars, but what they cost us in democratic integrity, vulnerability to fascism, and global legitimacy.

The answer may be far more than we bargained for.