Tariffs
This, along with immigration, has bee the mainstay of his campaign. Trump has talked about putting a 10% tax on all imports with discussion of as much as 60% on imports from China. More recently, he has talked about a 25% tax on imports from Canada and Mexico and general use of imports taxes as a form of coercion against any country he is angry at. He remains as enamored of tariffs as before saying that our country was at its wealthiest when McKinley was President and tariffs were our sole form of revenue. (Presumably by "wealthiest" he means the fastest economic growth. I don't know if that is true, but clearly we were less wealthy then in absolute terms and even Trump would have trouble denying that). No doubt emboldening him is the fact that he imposed tariffs in his last term and not much happened. There was some highly localized damages to a few industries, but no real damage to the overall macroeconomy, and nothing visible to the general public.
So far he has not actually done any of that. His latest promise is start tariffs on February 1. I guess we will see. It may be that the plutocrats have prevailed with him and the tariffs will be something like his healthcare plan, infrastructure, or peace plan for Ukraine -- something he always promises but never acts on.
But I hope he does act on tariffs -- the more the better, I say -- for the reasons discussed before. Tariffs will raise prices. That will be unpopular. Countries that expert to us will retaliate by taxing our exports. That will hurt our exports, which will also be unpopular. Yes, it will hurt other countries as well as ourselves. And some people fear that a trade war, once started, will be much harder to undo. I am sorry about all of that. But I generally do want to see Trump hurt our economy -- the worse the better. Hurting the economy will make him unpopular more quickly and more broadly than anything else. Democracy can survive economic damage. It has many times.
Immigration
This was the other big theme of Trump's campaign. He HATES immigrants and he plans to crack down. Compared to tariffs, the harm from anti-immigration actions will be more severe but less diffuse. While tariffs would impose a price squeeze on the general public and reduced business on people in our export sectors, an immigration crackdown on the scale being proposed will cause massive disruption in the lives of a lot of law-abiding and productive members of the community. It will probably cause a certain amount of harassment and profiling for a wider portion of the community. If it gets really extreme, it can hurt our overall economy, with the results being very unequally borne.
And it is clear that this is one thing Trump takes absolutely seriously. He has halted all asylum applications and refugee admissions. Both Trump and Vance have made clear that they do not consider this a legitimate form of immigration, and that they believe the proper number of asylum and refugee admissions is zero. By contrast, internal removal has only increased slightly.
It is hard to tell whether internal removals will greatly expand or remain largely unchanged and just get more publicity. There has been an immigration raid in Bakersfield, California on scale far beyond what the community had seen before, even before Trump came into office. There was also a highly publicized workplace raid in Newark, New Jersey. Even Navajos are reporting harassment by ICE!
All of this can produce a backlash in various ways. The sight of brutal and abusive immigration raids is apt to produce a humanitarian backlash. But whether the backlash reaches low information voters is an open question. And the MAGA faithful will no doubt be pleased. While Hispanic/Latino voters have been increasingly moving toward Trump over the last three elections, giving Trump an estimated 42% of their vote in 2024 (47% for Latino men), I have to think that if Latinos start being regularly harassed by ICE and asked to prove citizenship, their support for Trump will presumably decline.
But what would produce a really widespread backlash, perhaps even reaching the MAGA faithful, would be immigration raids on such a scale as to produce labor shortages. Small farm towns have experienced serious disruption in the past as a result of workplace raids. But so far we have seen only localized disruptions, nothing that produced a national effect. The federal government probably does not have the resources to do enough deportations to cause a nationwide labor shortage and rising food prices. But joined by state and local governments, and private vigilantes, it just might happen.
In short, the worse the crackdown the worse the backlash. And the more people get hurt in ways that can never be remedied.
Subversion of the federal bureaucracy
This one is by far the most dangerous, in large part because it will fly under most people's radar screens. Federal employees are not a popular group to begin with, and the assumption is widespread that the federal bureaucracy is corrupt, sclerotic, and wasteful. Its role in maintaining the rule of law is too remote and abstract for most people to appreciate.
So far the plan to fire everyone with "policy making" responsibility and replace them with party loyalist has not gotten far. Inevitably, replacing so many individuals will take time. But even changes at the very top have produced some shocking events. Paralysis of the National Institute of Health. A freeze in foreign aid. Suspending all DEI employees and ordering them to report and any language that might sound too "woke." And, most recently, firing 17 Inspectors General, the functionaries tasked with rooting out fraud, waste and abuse.* Rank-and-file federal employees are uncertain and intimidated. Imagine what will happen if all of middle management is replaced.
I consider these three things to be in order of escalating danger. Tariffs are the least dangerous. Mass deportation is intermediate. And subverting the federal bureaucracy is most dangerous. I have said it before and I will say it again.
Furthermore, I consider it more dangerous for Trump to combine subversion of the federal bureaucracy with tariffs and/or mass deportation than for him to undertake tariffs and/or mass deportations alone. But subverting the federal bureaucracy without the tariffs or mass deportations is the most dangerous of all. That is the approach that follows Rule #1 from the Smart Authoritarian's playbook -- save the unpopular stuff until after you have eliminated any power centers that might stop you. That is how democracy dies in darkness.
*Though, surprisingly, not Michael Horowitz, Department of Justice Inspector General, who would be responsible for investigating any attempt by the Trump Administration to bring unjustified charges against political opponents, including the handling of Rudy Giuliani's felgercarb on Hunter Biden.
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