One of Donald Trump’s principal policy initiatives during his new administration has been the implementation of 25 percent tariffs on all imports from Canada and Mexico. These tariffs are based on two claims: massive amounts of fentanyl are being smuggled into the United States from these countries and tariffs will encourage companies to build their factories in America, giving jobs to Americans.
There’s just one problem: both of these claims are deliberately misleading. Fentanyl is not being smuggled across the Canadian border in massive amounts. In 2024, only 42 pounds of fentanyl was seized by the Customs and Border Protection Agency at the northern border. For reference, in the same year about 21,000 pounds of fentanyl were seized at the southern border.
Regardless of the legitimacy of the claim surrounding fentanyl smuggling across the northern border, the president should be trying to solve this issue diplomatically with America’s closest ally, not by attempting to strong-arm them into doing what he wants. The same is true with Mexico and any other ally; the U.S. should resolve its issues with its friends through diplomacy.
Some people believe that these tariffs are a negotiation tactic used to get a better trade deal; however, Trump has already said that’s not the case. Even if he didn’t, he already negotiated the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement during his first term, so why didn’t he try to get a more preferable deal back then? It makes no sense.
America’s emergence as a world superpower and leader of the Western world was rooted in free trade, diplomacy, and cooperative alliances. If the U.S. starts falling back into the trap of isolationism, its geopolitical reputation will suffer and America will just become another fallen empire in history. The people of America cannot accept that fate and must fight to stop Trump from alienating the U.S. from the rest of the world.
Trump’s second claim is as misleading as the first: it’s not impossible that tariffs will bring jobs to Americans, but it’s quite unlikely. Jobs that were lost because of free trade would take a long time to be “brought back” to America, and even so it would probably only be a few thousand jobs. Meanwhile, prices will increase for all Americans on goods like cherry tomatoes, maple syrup, tequila, and avocados. Why should hundreds of millions of Americans suffer in order to try to bring back a few thousand jobs, especially considering that the unemployment rate in the U.S. is already at 4.1 percent, a number which many economists consider to be ideal, and any value lower than that would actually be worse for the overall economy.
Tariffs are essentially an import tax. So why are Republican politicians, the same people that constantly claim the U.S. needs to lower taxes to keep money in the pockets of working class Americans, so supportive of them? It’s because it was never about helping the working class. It’s always been about lowering taxes for the wealthy, and Republicans’ focus on tariffs that raise the price of essential goods and tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the wealthy reveal exactly that.
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