Let’s be clear from the outset: we will not use the word ‘tariff’ in this discussion without qualifying it. It is a politically convenient, almost quaint-sounding euphemism for what it actually is: a national consumption tax on imported goods. It is a tax you pay, and the refusal of its proponents to call it that is the first and most important deception in a long chain of bad-faith arguments.
The modern Republican Party’s embrace of this tax is a case study in intellectual abdication. This is the party that once, at least performatively, revered the free-market principles of thinkers like Milton Friedman. The GOP of the past would have been the first to stand on the floor of the Senate and correctly identify a tariff as a tax that stifles competition, hurts consumers, and inevitably leads to retaliatory measures that harm American industries. They understood that you cannot tax your way to prosperity.
That party is dead. In its place is a movement that has embraced the very protectionist policies its predecessors rightly scorned.
The Great Deception: “Other Countries Pay For It”
The most successful grift in modern politics is the idea that tariffs are paid by foreign countries. This is an economic fiction, a fairy tale. A tariff is a bill handed to the American company that imports the goods. That company, operating in the real world of profit and loss, does not simply “eat the cost,” as the current political rhetoric dishonestly suggests.
Like any other business expense, that cost is passed on. It is passed on to the American consumer in the form of higher prices at the register. It is passed on to American manufacturers who now have to pay more for raw materials and components, making their own products less competitive. For example, a tax on imported steel is not a punishment for Beijing; it is a punishment for the American company buying that steel, and a punishment it then passes on to you.
This is the central gaslighting campaign of the new right, and that is to convince supporters that the laws of economics can be suspended by sheer political will. The narrative is that we have been fleeced for decades by a massive trade deficit and that an import tax is a tool to make other countries finally “pay their fair share.” It’s a simplistic, emotionally satisfying story that casts America as the victim finally fighting back. The reality, while an inconvenient truth, is that you are taxing yourself to make a political point.
The Virtuous Punishment
Of course, there is a faction of supporters who understand perfectly well that the import tax is passed on to them. For them, the economic pain is a feature. They are willing to pay more for goods because they see it as a patriotic sacrifice. They see it as a way to punish not only foreign countries but also the American companies and consumers they deem insufficiently loyal.
For this group, making life more difficult for “coastal elites” who buy foreign cars or for corporations that manufacture overseas is a virtuous act. They believe they are saving America by forcing a return to domestic manufacturing, as if the required workforce can be summoned out of thin air and factories can be built in a day. It is a fantasy of industrial revival built almost entirely on a foundation of economic punishment.
They ignore the reality that there are far more intelligent, less destructive avenues to encourage domestic production, such as targeted tax incentives, investments in workforce training, and strategic deregulation. But those are serious, boring policy solutions. They don’t offer the same satisfying, punitive thrill as a trade war.
A Tool of Performance
If the economics are so clear, why has this become the signature policy of the modern right? Because the import tax isn’t a serious tool of economic strategy. It’s a tool of political performance.
It allows a politician to look tough. It generates headlines about “standing up to China.” It’s a simple, emotionally resonant message that plays well on a cable news show, all while the actual economic pain is diffused across millions of American households who may not even realize why the price of everything is slowly ticking up. It is, in short, the perfect post-truth policy: all spectacle and no substance.
This is the shell game. While the politician distracts you with their loud, nationalist rhetoric, their hand is quietly taking money from your pocket. And the first step toward stopping the con is to refuse to play along. It’s not a tariff. It’s a tax. And it’s long past time we all started calling it that.