70/30 Foolishness

President Trump has an impressive way of finding himself on the high side of 70/30 and 80/20 issues. The implementation may not always work out, like Secretary Noem’s deportation plans, but generally, the President’s embrace of ‘common sense’ gets him on the right side of plenty of issues. Americans may not care for his job performance for many reasons, but it remains remarkable how much less they care for the Democrats. Being on the right side of the 80/20 and the 70/30 issues matter.

That makes it more remarkable that the President has decided to land on the 30% side of tariffs, liked only by his hardcore base. Democrats, Independents, most Republicans, seniors, the young, the rich, and the poor all hate the tariffs. They understand, as multiple studies have shown, that 95% of the tariffs are paid by Americans.

Having now been rejected by the United States Supreme Court, the only surprise in the decision being that it was not unanimous, the President has rapidly doubled down on new schemes for tariffs. Some of his schemes his own legal team argued in the tariff case would not legally apply. So the President, in other words, has decided to fall back on laws that his lawyers have already told the Supreme Court that the President cannot use.

Over the weekend, Democratic strategists admitted they intend to make tariffs a central piece of their 2026 campaign. The President is working to oust from Congress those Republicans who stood up to him. The others are preparing to go down with the ship. Democrats, should they actually pivot on tariffs, will find themselves, perhaps for the first time, opposed to a tax increase while the Republican Party embraces a massive tax increase on the poor and middle class.

Republican talking points that the poor and middle class are not burdened by the tariffs are just lies. The rich pay them more because the rich buy more expensive things that the tariffs are attached to. But the poor and middle class and small businesses across America are all paying them. The idea that they can be avoided by buying American is likewise a lie because the tariffs apply not just to whole products but the parts in those products and even champions of “just buy American” have learned even they cannot avoid the tax man.

This is madness. It is also just wild that a man with no real principle or governing convictions on anything else is dogmatically convinced that nineteenth century tax and trade policy is the best solution to an interconnected twenty-first century world. Tariffs are a terrible policy. The Supreme Court rejected his brazen tax spree. Undeterred, the President seems willing to go down with the ship. Unfortunately, he’ll be taking the GOP with him.

A growing sentiment among some on the right who are not really MAGA fans, but have supported the President, is that the GOP needs a serious beat down by voters in November. Perhaps then, having actual common sense knocked into them, the GOP will see the light. While I understand the sentiment, the reality is Democrats would be so much worse for the nation on fiscal matters, tax matters, defense matters, and culture matters. But, it seems the GOP as a whole will get that beat down, deserved or not, because of the President’s foolishness.

What makes this particularly tragic is that the damage may outlast the tariffs themselves. Even if a future administration moves quickly to dismantle the policy, the economic disruption — broken supply chains, abandoned trade relationships, shuttered small businesses — will not simply reverse overnight. Trading partners who have spent years diversifying away from American markets will not rush back. Manufacturers who relocated or restructured to survive the tariff regime will not immediately undo those decisions. The economic scar tissue tends to linger long after the wound is closed.

There is also the matter of credibility. The United States built the post-war global trading order largely on the premise that American economic leadership was stable and predictable. Allies and adversaries alike now have fresh evidence that a single administration can upend decades of policy on a whim, and that the courts may not intervene swiftly enough to limit the damage. That credibility, once spent, is extraordinarily difficult to rebuild. Future administrations — Republican or Democrat — will pay that price at the negotiating table for years to come, and American businesses and workers will ultimately bear the cost.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​