Social media has been flooded today with stories of Trump voters who are shocked to learn that tariffs will raise consumer prices
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
November 8, 2024
Heather Cox Richardson Nov 08, 2024 7,306 1,440 898 Share
Social media has been flooded today with stories of Trump voters who are shocked to learn that tariffs will raise consumer prices as reporters are covering that information. Daniel Laguna of LevelUp warned that Trump’s proposed 60% tariff on Chinese imports could raise the costs of gaming consoles by 40%, so that a PS5 Pro gaming system would cost up to $1,000. One of the old justifications for tariffs was that they would bring factories home, but when the $3 billion shoe company Steve Madden announced yesterday it would reduce its imports from China by half to avoid Trump-promised tariffs, it said it will shift production not to the U.S., but to Cambodia, Vietnam, Mexico, and Brazil.
There are also stories that voters who chose Trump to lower household expenses are unhappy to discover that their undocumented relatives are in danger of deportation. When CNN’s Dana Bash asked Indiana Republican senator-elect Jim Banks if undocumented immigrants who had been here for a long time and integrated into the community would be deported, Banks answered that deportation should include “every illegal in this country that we can find.” Yesterday a Trump-appointed federal judge struck down a policy established by the Biden administration that was designed to create an easier path to citizenship for about half a million undocumented immigrants who are married to U.S. citizens.
Meanwhile, Trump’s advisors told Jim VandeHei and MIke Allen of Axios that Trump wasted valuable time at the beginning of his first term and that they will not make that mistake again. They plan to hit the ground running with tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, deregulation, and increased gas and oil production. Trump is looking to fill the top ranks of the government with “billionaires, former CEOs, tech leaders and loyalists.”
After the election, the wealth of Trump-backer Elon Musk jumped about $13 billion, making him worth $300 billion. Musk, who has been in frequent contact with Russian president Vladimir Putin, joined a phone call today between President-elect Trump and Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky.
In Salon today, Amanda Marcotte noted that in states all across the country where voters backed Trump, they also voted for abortion rights, higher minimum wage, paid sick and family leave, and even to ban employers from forcing their employees to sit through right-wing or anti-union meetings. She points out that 12% of voters in Missouri voted both for abortion rights and for Trump.
Marcotte recalled that Catherine Rampell and Youyou Zhou of the Washington Post showed before the election that voters overwhelmingly preferred Harris’s policies to Trump’s if they didn’t know which candidate proposed them. An Ipsos/Reuters poll from October showed that voters who were misinformed about immigration, crime, and the economy tended to vote Republican, while those who knew the facts preferred Democrats. Many Americans turn for information to social media or to friends and family who traffic in conspiracy theories. As Angelo Carusone of Media Matters put it: “We have a country that is pickled in right-wing misinformation and rage.”
In The New Republic today, Michael Tomasky reinforced that voters chose Trump in 2024 not because of the economy or inflation, or anything else, but because of how they perceived those issues—which is not the same thing. Right-wing media “fed their audiences a diet of slanted and distorted information that made it possible for Trump to win,” Tomasky wrote. Right-wing media has overtaken legacy media to set the country’s political agenda not only because it’s bigger, but because it speaks with one voice, “and that voice says Democrats and liberals are treasonous elitists who hate you, and Republicans and conservatives love God and country and are your last line of defense against your son coming home from school your daughter.”
Tomasky noted how the work of Matthew Gertz of Media Matters shows that nearly all the crazy memes that became central campaign issues—the pet-eating story, for example, or the idea that the booming economy was terrible—came from right-wing media. In those circles, Vice President Kamala Harris was a stupid, crazed extremist who orchestrated a coup against President Joe Biden and doesn’t care about ordinary Americans, while Trump is under assault and has been for years, and he’s “doing it all for you.”
Investigative reporter Miranda Green outlined how “pink slime” newspapers, which are AI generated from right-wing sites, turned voters to Trump in key swing state counties. Republican strategist Sarah Longwell, who studies focus groups, told NPR, “When I ask voters in focus groups if they think Donald Trump is an authoritarian, the #1 response by far is, ‘What is an authoritarian?’”
In a social media post, Marcotte wrote: “A lot of voters are profoundly ignorant. More so than in the past.” That jumped out to me because there was, indeed, an earlier period in our history when voters were “pickled in right-wing misinformation and rage.”
In the 1850s, white southern leaders made sure that voters did not have access to news that came from outside the American South, and instead steeped them in white supremacist information. They stopped the mail from carrying abolitionist pamphlets, destroyed presses of antislavery newspapers, and drove antislavery southerners out of their region.
Elite enslavers had reason to be concerned about the survival of their system of human enslavement. The land boom of the 1840s, when removal of Indigenous peoples had opened up rich new lands for settlement, had priced many white men out of the market. They had become economically unstable, roving around the country working for wages or stealing to survive. And they deeply resented the fabulously wealthy enslavers who they knew looked down on them.
In 1857, North Carolinian Hinton Rowan Helper wrote a book attacking enslavement. No friend to his Black neighbors, Helper was a virulent white supremacist. But in The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It, he used modern statistics to prove that slavery destroyed economic opportunity for white men, and assailed “the illbreeding and ruffianism of the slaveholding officials.” He noted that voters in the South who did not own slaves outnumbered by far those who did. "Give us fair play, secure to us the right of discussion, the freedom of speech, and we will settle the difficulty at the ballot-box,” he wrote.
In the North the book sold like hotcakes—142,000 copies by fall 1860. But southern leaders banned the book, and burned it, too. They arrested men for selling it and accused northerners of making war on the South. Politicians, newspaper editors, and ministers reinforced white supremacy, warned that the end of slavery would mean race war, and preached that enslavement was God’s law.
When northern voters elected Abraham Lincoln in November 1860 on a platform of containing enslavement in the South, where the sapped soil would soon cut into production, southern leaders decided—usually without the input of voters—to secede from the Union. As leaders promised either that there wouldn’t be a fight, or that if a fight happened it would be quick and painless, poor southern whites rallied to the cause of creating a nation based on white supremacy, reassured by South Carolina senator James Chesnut’s vow that he would personally drink all the blood shed in any threatened civil war.
When Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter in April 1861, poor white men set out for what they had come to believe was an imperative cause to protect their families and their way of life. By 1862 their enthusiasm had waned, and leaders passed a conscription law. That law permitted wealthy men to hire a substitute and exempted one man to oversee every 20 enslaved men, providing another way for rich men to keep their sons out of danger. Soldiers complained it was a “rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.”
By 1865 the Civil War had killed or wounded 483,026 men out of a southern white population of about five and a half million people. U.S. armies had pushed families off their lands, and wartime inflation drove ordinary people to starvation. By 1865, wives wrote to their soldier husbands to come home or there would be no one left to come home to.
Even those poor white men who survived the war could not rebuild into prosperity. The war took from the South its monopoly of global cotton production, locking poor southerners into profound poverty from which they would not begin to recover until the 1930s, when the New Deal began to pour federal money into the region.
Today, when I received a slew of messages gloating that Trump had won the election and that Republican voters had owned the libs, I could not help but think of that earlier era when ordinary white men sold generations of economic aspirations for white supremacy and bragging rights.
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Which is kind of stupid, since Biden kept the tariffs Trump enacted. As if it is brilliant if Biden did it but somehow bad if Trump does it. I'd say this is really a sad take on things as it assumes the public is that stupid but, they probably are. Half of it, anyway. If Trump ran into a burning building to save an illegal immigrant child the left would find some way to make it negative.
There is a lot of reason to think that right wing media and social media has misinformed and "brainwashed" many millions of people. The extent to which Trump voters get their information only from propaganda sources is shocking.
Okay. Should be easy to list them, then. Go ahead.
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This is why I don't know why I waste any time here. Ridiculous.
I gave you a thumbs up. Couldn't agree more. I don't know either
That oversimplifies the situation and, in result, is a failed argument.
First, the tariffs imposed by Trump in his first term were not crazy like he is talking now.
Second, tariffs are not always bad. So keeping tariffs is not necessarily a bad action.
Biden kept a number of tariffs from Trump on select Chinese imports largely to encourage domestic production and to continue to deal with the trade imbalance with China.
However, Biden did reduce tariffs on solar cell components.
It is critical to understand that Trump campaigned on gratuitous tariffs with the express purpose of generating tax revenue to fund his many promises. In addition, the economic moron insisted that tariffs do not raise prices (similar to the climate-change moron claiming that a rising ocean level will create more beachfront property). When Trump talks about extreme tariffs of 50%, 100%, even 500% that is flat out insane. How on earth is it possible that so many people do not understand this?
How many times have I posted that the real reason that the voters would vote for Trump would be that they were incapable of critical thinking, unable to discern truth from lies, for which I blamed the failure of the incompetent primary and secondary education system. As for the tariffs, well, if nobody understood what they would cause, then that is proof of my theory. I feel really sorry for Americans at this point, and I can SO understand what Jesus is to have said as related in Luke 23:34 "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do" even though it had to do with casting lots for dividing clothes, because it sure as hell explains what they've brought down upon themselves.
You mean like it did during Trump's first term?
Oh wait, no the tariffs didn't do shit to prices then.
Prices/inflation didn't increase until the first several months into the Biden administration. Care to explain that? What did Biden and Democrats do (they controlled both the House and Senate) that fucked everything up?
Answer that question.
The article is about all the false bullshit you people listen to and absorb.
The outcome of successful planning always looks like luck to saps.
How profound
and untrue.
Seems like your comment is a contradiction.
Which explains the flaw in employing tariffs alone. While China's subsidization of its businesses is certainly the enemy of the US, employing tariffs on that basis alone isn't going to work. There are at least two prongs necessary for tariffs to work effectively, in my opinion. Along with the tariff, the government must also incentivize relocating manufacturing from overseas to the US. As Madden demonstrates, tariffs employed selectively isn't going to work.
As for people on the right being shocked by the idea that tariffs would raise prices I find that no more surprising than those on the left who don't realize that raising taxes on corporations would have the exact same effect. That is, in both cases, it is the consumer who will ultimately pay for the policy. Personally, in the case of tariffs on China, I knew that long before Trump enacted them. I was willing to pay more in order to make China suffer for the trade imbalance.
Long ago I read that tariffs were of little or no consequence for the provision of jobs in American factories, and I love the hypocrisy of the American government subsidizing such things as the manufacture of microchips and the purchase of EVs but blaming China for subsidizing.
Yeah, except China's subsidizing is magnitudes greater than most other countries. Further, until Trump, we didn't weaponize subsidies the way China always has. China's foreign policy is "lie, steal and cheat" first and foremost, along with bullying everyone they can.
Yes, I know about them. As far as those relationships being good, well, that remains to be seen. Considering China's internal problems, they may not be able to maintain them for long.
Really? Can you provide some evidence of what your opinion is based upon? Seems that if it's that serious, the Chinese people don't know about it.
Yes, but I'm not going to bother, since there is endless examples of evidence online. Oh, yeah. Forgot. You live in China so you won't be able to access it, which should tell you something. I will simply say that there is likely no sector of China that isn't plagued by massive corruption. For example, the apparently massive amount of Tofu dregs construction in every sector of China is simply astounding.
You asked John for examples in 1.12. Are you a tempting to tell us that Trump and the 'right' were not spreading lies ? Cause Trump even lies while sitting up in bed.
Did you not hear, our economy is in shambles and could collapse unless Trump gets elected. Meanwhile it is the envy of the entire world , a whirled spun like a Trumpullthinskinned one to be sick and frail, just it isn't. Inflation was high but it slowly corrected itself after the pandemic devastation that was neither Trumps' or Bidens' fault, but many companies did engage in price gouging, but i'm sure Trump will have that as a top priority, so he can see, how to get in on that industry.
Trump continued incessantly raagingv about the terrible crime waves, possibly cause he was envious, and how illegals were raping and pillaging when not murdering about, everybody, but in reality, crime had significantly dropped under Biden.
These were two of the largest concerns for citizens, and Trump, along with right wing media outlets played them as the worst possible things in the damn world, but, of course they lied.
Then, take into account how Trumps true real deal crimes and court cases, were postponed,
by a corrupted partial Trump appointed 3 conservative judges, for if he had stood trial, which he would have if not for the supremes, i believe he would never have been elected. Trumps mind, is infected, should have never been elected, and bad times are approaching. This is not going to end well for US
After re-reading the relevant posts, I can't imagine how it could result in this question.
I see no evidence of that. That is, the things I spend money on have not been reduced in price. So, while I can't say you are wrong, I can't see evidence that you are right.
As for the rest of your post, I am at a loss to understand the relevance to what is being discussed.
Since you feel I'm unable to access American web sites (which in fact I can access many of) then you could be civil and provide me with the sources of your "information" about China, or your comments just might be a pile of bullshit. From what I've seen elsewhere I'm beginning to understand that.
Says the guy who's often saying they can't see what's being posted here. Just YouTube Tofu dregs, for a start.
Prices and the rate of inflation are related but different.
The inflation rate is now back to normal levels but prices have not returned to pre-pandemic levels. The electorate apparently does not see the excellent progress (reduction) of the inflation rate, the surging GDP, the lower unemployment rate, and (to top it off) a stock market continuing to break record highs (a bellwether of the economy).
In short, our economy is in great shape and if not fucked up by insane policies, will continue to correct for the betterment of all.
I think prices will lower a bit but I do not expect to ever see pre-pandemic prices again. And Trump obviously has no control over this so do not expect any magic.
Note also that inflation and (thus) higher prices is a worldwide phenomenon, not just the USA and there are plenty of nations who are experiencing much higher price inflation than us.
Higher prices have been reasonably correlated with global election losses of incumbents.
As a petty fuck I hope he does it, just so I can throw out a ton of "shut the fuck up"s when people who voted fore him whine.
I expect Trump/GOP tax cuts, tariffs and run away spending needed for immigration and border spending to run the US into a recession by the 2026 mid-terms.
If this (the flooding of social media) is true, why did it take an election for the insanity of excessive tariffs to be recognized and discussed?
It's going to be interesting to see the increase in consumer bankruptcies caused by trump economic policies.
And sad since many of those who voted for Trump because of some perceived magical power over prices will suffer, yet still will not learn the basics of the economy.
For others, it remains a mystery how someone who actually understood that tariffs are paid by the importer and passed on to the consumer would vote for Trump because they trust him to lower prices.
Trump did brag that a significant portion of his base consists of the poorly educated, low information types. We see that confirmed by his cultists' comments on here every day.
People vote for this shit because they don’t understand the economy any better than Trump does.
Trump’s tariffs are equivalent to one of the largest tax increases in decades
Does it increase revenue? Absolutely, but it started a trade war in tariffs and consumers paid the bill.
It would be great if it compelled manufacturers back to the United States, but it doesn’t.
Meanwhile, the tariffs he is proposing this time are far higher than anything he did before.
Higher prices are on the way, with no one they can blame but their own votes. Funny how right wing voters are duped on illegal immigrant Republican messaging which never addresses the Businesses that hire them. What's going to happen to Republican elites when their lawn care, nannies, domestic workers they hire disappear? How can they all dump their own illegal immigrant workers before the crackdown? While Republicans are all for Big Oil, they don't seem interested in investigating how many illegals work for oil companies. How many right wing businesses will suffer because they skirt the law or turn a blind eye to illegals as long as they can exploit the cheap labor which will disappear. Republicans fight, fight, fight against raising the minimum wage for American workers. Why? If they think American workers don't deserve dignity or a living wage, do they actually believe American workers will work for mere pennies on the dollar? Why don't Republicans propose jail time for businesses that hire illegals?
“Why don't Republicans propose jail time for businesses that hire illegals? “
That is the ‘wink, wink, nudge, nudge’ conundrum that has been self-servingly ignored for decades.
Some complain about the economy only in their largesse…forgetting who harvests their food, cooks their meals and washes their dishes when dining out…who changes their linens and manicures the grounds when on vacation…who builds their homes, picks up our garbage and maintains our streets.
We still enjoy these things, regardless of the ramifications on the economy should they disappear…with eyes closed and votes cast in blissful ignorance.