If You Work With Donald Trump, You Are the Same as Nazi Collaborators And Why Global Trade Should Have Changed in 1991

Why should any U.S. good (or service) going to a country face a higher tariff, barrier, or quota limitation than that country’s good (or service) faces coming to the U.S.?

As I’ve previously written, why does James Carville still get a media airtime? There is no whack job on the Right who says the equivalent crazy things that Carville says who gets mainstream media airtime. He has become little more than a crazy, old man who says things like the old relative who still uses words and sayings long assigned to the offensive dustbin of history. Here is Carville’s latest slur:

They didn't take very kindly to the collaborators. No, it was not a very pretty sight in the streets of Paris. I'm not saying that these people should be placed in pajamas and have their head shaved, marched down Pennsylvania Avenue and spit on. I'm not saying that, but I'm saying that that did happen. They're stupid, they're anti-patriotic. How disgraced must these law firms feel now, how disgraced must these companies that are sucking up to him that are giving him tens of millions of dollars for access...do you know what's going to happen? Do you know how this ends? These people betrayed the French nation in the same way that I think that these law firms and these giant corporate conglomerates are betraying the United States. Etch their names in the tablet of history for being some of the greatest traitors appeasers that we've seen in the history of our great country. [K]eep a list of collaborators and traitors that have exhibited extreme cowardness in the face of the most dangerous domestic enemy this country has faced since the Civil War.

I bet you didn’t know you were reading the column of a Nazi-like collaborator? It isn’t your fault, I didn’t know I was either. Mary, please give James his meds and put him to bed already.

On the tariff issue, the nightly Irish program, The Tonight Show, asked me to come on to comment on Trump’s tariff plans. Watch the video below for my two cents.

In case you missed it, I also dove into the tariff issue on my weekly interview on the Bruce Hooley Show on 98.9FM The Answer. You can listen to the segment here.

I know the tariff issue can be emotional and confusing, with lots of “experts,” CEOs, and government officials chiming in, but it really boils down to a very simple question:

Why should any U.S. good (or service) going to a country face a higher tariff, barrier, or quota limitation than that country’s good (or service) faces coming to the U.S.?

If U.S. cars face a 10% tariff in Europe, then European cars should face a 10% tariff here. If U.S. farmers can’t sell their wheat in Europe, then European farmers shouldn’t be able to sell their wheat here. If U.S. companies face barriers to selling goods in China, then Chinese companies should face barriers selling goods here. Or…hear me out—we can bilaterally remove all tariffs, barriers, and quota limitations on goods so consumers decide which goods they want to buy at the prices offered. If foreigners don’t want our cars but Americans want their cars, then so be it. Same for wheat and every other good.

The status quo is that every country protects its farmers, manufacturers, and tech companies against U.S. farmers, manufacturers, and tech companies while America not only doesn’t protect its farmers, manufactures, and tech companies but it knowingly sacrifices many of those entities for some trade philosophy adopted after World War II that makes no sense in 2025.

Trump is finally fighting a fight that should have been fought, at the latest, in 1991 when the U.S.S.R. collapsed and any basis for Americans to subsidize foreign countries by maintaining low tariffs and barriers on their goods evaporated. I can make the case that practice should have ended for Japan and Western Europe by 1970s when those places had fully recovered from World War II. By 1991, there were no more African or South American countries we wanted to keep out of the influence of the evil Soviets. There were no more Eastern European countries susceptible to Soviet control. Certainly, by 2004 when tons of Eastern European countries joined the European Union, trade barriers between the E.U. and U.S. should have been eliminated.

Speaking of the E.U., it is now threatening Elon Musk with a $1 billion fine for spreading “misinformation.” See how that works? Musk supports non-Establishment political parties in Europe, the E.U. raises the boogieman of “misinformation” to go after Musk. Keep in mind, the E.U. has never been voted on successfully by a Member nation. It lost both elections held to affirm its legitimacy in France and the Netherlands, with Brexit serving as a bright reminder of how Average Joe and Jane European sees the E.U. Along with the regfare practiced by the E.U. against U.S. companies (another trade barrier), the free speech assault against Musk must not be allowed to continue.

You know what else has gotten tiring? Peggy Noonan and the Wall Street Journal editorial page. I’ve been a subscriber for over two decades. I even had an op-ed published in the WSJ. WSJ editorial writers hate Trump. In terms of Noonan, I used to be a big fan of her writing, as I always found it insightful (though also thought she got way more mileage off of writing speeches for Ronald Reagan than she likely deserved). I think she hit her peak back in February 2016 when she wrote the column, “Trump and the Rise of the Unprotected.” It was an amazing piece. I actually had dinner with Noonan shortly after the piece ran where she provided additional insights into the rise of Trump. In the piece, she wrote:

But I keep thinking of how Donald Trump got to be the very likely Republican nominee. There are many answers and reasons, but my thoughts keep revolving around the idea of protection. It is a theme that has been something of a preoccupation in this space over the years, but I think I am seeing it now grow into an overall political dynamic throughout the West.

There are the protected and the unprotected. The protected make public policy. The unprotected live in it. The unprotected are starting to push back, powerfully.

The protected are the accomplished, the secure, the successful—those who have power or access to it. They are protected from much of the roughness of the world. More to the point, they are protected from the world they have created. Again, they make public policy and have for some time.

I want to call them the elite to load the rhetorical dice, but let’s stick with the protected.

They are figures in government, politics and media. They live in nice neighborhoods, safe ones. Their families function, their kids go to good schools, they’ve got some money. All of these things tend to isolate them, or provide buffers. Some of them—in Washington it is important officials in the executive branch or on the Hill; in Brussels, significant figures in the European Union—literally have their own security details.

Because they are protected they feel they can do pretty much anything, impose any reality. They’re insulated from many of the effects of their own decisions.

One issue obviously roiling the U.S. and Western Europe is immigration. It is the issue of the moment, a real and concrete one but also a symbolic one: It stands for all the distance between governments and their citizens.

It is of course the issue that made Donald Trump.

Britain will probably leave the European Union over it. In truth immigration is one front in that battle, but it is the most salient because of the European refugee crisis and the failure of the protected class to address it realistically and in a way that offers safety to the unprotected.

If you are an unprotected American—one with limited resources and negligible access to power—you have absorbed some lessons from the past 20 years’ experience of illegal immigration. You know the Democrats won’t protect you and the Republicans won’t help you. Both parties refused to control the border. The Republicans were afraid of being called illiberal, racist, of losing a demographic for a generation. The Democrats wanted to keep the issue alive to use it as a wedge against the Republicans and to establish themselves as owners of the Hispanic vote.

Many Americans suffered from illegal immigration—its impact on labor markets, financial costs, crime, the sense that the rule of law was collapsing. But the protected did fine—more workers at lower wages. No effect of illegal immigration was likely to hurt them personally.

It was good for the protected. But the unprotected watched and saw. They realized the protected were not looking out for them, and they inferred that they were not looking out for the country, either.

The unprotected came to think they owed the establishment—another word for the protected—nothing, no particular loyalty, no old allegiance.

Mr. Trump came from that.

…

What marks this political moment, in Europe and the U.S., is the rise of the unprotected. It is the rise of people who don’t have all that much against those who’ve been given many blessings and seem to believe they have them not because they’re fortunate but because they’re better.

You see the dynamic in many spheres. In Hollywood, as we still call it, where they make our rough culture, they are careful to protect their own children from its ill effects. In places with failing schools, they choose not to help them through the school liberation movement—charter schools, choice, etc.—because they fear to go up against the most reactionary professional group in America, the teachers unions. They let the public schools flounder. But their children go to the best private schools.

This is a terrible feature of our age—that we are governed by protected people who don’t seem to care that much about their unprotected fellow citizens.

And a country really can’t continue this way.

In wise governments the top is attentive to the realities of the lives of normal people, and careful about their anxieties. That’s more or less how America used to be. There didn’t seem to be so much distance between the top and the bottom.

Now is seems the attitude of the top half is: You’re on your own. Get with the program, little racist.

Brilliant stuff. Now, Noonan is nothing more than a NeverTrumper from the Upper West Side of New York City who sees nothing but dark clouds and destruction when it comes to Trump. She is not much different than Carville. Seriously, whatever Trump does, Noonan says it is bad. She seems to have forgotten about her column on the unprotected. Nine years later, Trump’s actions on immigration, trade, and reining in the federal government are 100% about helping the unprotected. When his second term ends, he will go back to Mar-a-Lago and play golf with all of the famous people who want to play golf with him. He will still be a billionaire. His success on immigration, trade, and reining in government won’t benefit him hardly at all. His success will make America great again for hundreds of millions of unprotected Americans. Is that really that bad of a thing, James and Peggy?