You cannot watch the news or read an article on any mainstream publication these days without encountering various doom-and-gloom declarations about the Trump administration’s tariffs. We are assured by virtually every news outlet that disaster awaits America because President Trump has dared to tax foreign goods coming into the country.
Forbes calls the tariffs “economic warfare.” Bloomberg declares the tariffs “risky strategy.” The Hill claims tariffs will be “devastating” to the Alaskan seafood market. Reuters says China will win. Many other publications cannot be bothered to write about tariffs, because the subject is complicated and boring. Let’s take a look at the tariff from a biblical perspective, shall we?
To begin, why are so many in the media outraged by President Trump imposing tariffs? The answer is that “free trade” – in which foreign countries can have access to the American consumer market for “free” to take advantage of us – has become a religion for many in America. Some think that the name “free trade” implies “freedom” when the opposite is the case. Free trade carries with it open borders and the “free” movement of the labor capital (people and jobs).
Free trade agreements from NAFTA to KOR-US and others enabled companies to pack up their US operations and move overseas without penalty. Former President Barack Obama arrogantly told us, “Those jobs are not coming back” – as if it is an immutable law of nature that once a factory moves due to economic incentive, it can never come back if economic incentives change.
Here’s a simplified explanation of what happened between 1989 and 2016 in America, when “free trade” presidents were running the show. Suppose that Company X wants to expand its factory operations to create more widgets. It can expand a factory in Iowa and pay American workers a living wage to build the widgets. Or, if trade barriers are erased and no tariffs are imposed, Company X can shut down the Iowa factory; build a completely new factory in China; pay Chinese workers a dollar a day for labor; and sell the widgets back in America for a 75,000% profit margin.
America’s manufacturing sector was gutted through this policy. We lost an estimated 55,000 factories due to “free trade” and zero tariffs. Rather than imposing “just weights and measures” in the marketplace, the free trade politicians tilted the scales heavily in favor of foreign markets – at the expense of the American worker. Companies willing to set up shop overseas could rake in massive profits and the American middle class paid for it.
People forget that President Ronald Reagan was beloved by the American voters because he was a trade protectionist. When he left office in 1989, the free traders rejoiced because the “long, dark night” was finally over and they could start raking in their huge profits again – and for some strange reason, the economy here kept shrinking!
President Trump has said to the Company X’s of the world, “That’s fine. Build your factory in China. But you will pay a crippling tariff on every widget before it ever makes its way to a store shelf in America.” The Trump tariffs offset the profit margin to the point where Company X now has an economic advantage to move its factory back to Iowa to employ American workers. As we have seen time and time again – President Trump’s strategy is working.
God told the Israelites in Deuteronomy 23:20, “To a foreigner you may charge interest, but to your brother you shall not charge interest, that the Lord your God may bless you in all to which you set your hand in the land which you are entering to possess.”
In Ezra chapter 4, one of the false accusations made against the newly-freed Israelites was that they would refuse to pay tariffs if they obtained full independence. Jesus explains to Peter in Matthew 17 that kings impose tariffs on foreigners – not on their own sons.
The Bible clearly shows us that all nations are not created equally. Nowhere in Scripture are we told that government should place its own citizens at an economic disadvantage to a foreign country. Where is the logic in that? How is the church to carry out charity if we allow the politicians to impoverish our own parishioners through stupidity?
President Trump is taking America back to the days when tariffs were used as a carrot and a stick for foreign nations. Brutal, repressive regimes and greedy, anti-American corporations don’t get access to the American market unless they pay the toll – and if they don’t want to pay the toll, they have to come back to the bargaining table and negotiate a better deal for American workers.
~ Christian Patriot Daily
