The front lines of a war waged with tariffs look different than a war waged on the battlefield. On the battlefield, the US deploys well trained soldiers armed with cutting edge equipment, supported by a better supply chain than other countries can even imagine. And to top it all off everyone on that battlefield is a volunteer. Tariff wars are just a bit different. The front lines consist of single moms struggling to survive, raise their kids, feed their kids, cloth their kids, and educate their kids. And the biggest difference is that these moms didn’t volunteer for this.
Tariffs are a fee that foreign manufacturers are charged for selling goods in the US. Economists near unanimously agree that tariffs are bad. The problems with tariffs are multifold. First, they raise the cost of goods. Foreign manufacturers don’t just pay the new fee and shrug their shoulders – they raise their prices. That means that either fewer products are purchased or they are purchased at a higher price; both options result in a lower quality of life. The problems don’t stop there though. The real problem is that tariffs mess with the distribution of the economy.
Simple trade works because one person is good at making something and one person is good at making something else – like beer and pizza. If these two people trade then they could both have more beer and pizza than if they each tried to make both. A tariff artificially raises the cost of one of these goods and changes the incentives across the whole market. Maybe everyone moves out of beer production and focuses on pizza because beer becomes too expensive. This isn’t really a problem with beer and pizza because we might still have bourbon, but if the tariff affects the steel market and building new buildings becomes too expensive problems can start showing up in markets. For example, old buildings are less energy efficient, putting more demand on our energy infrastructure. This would mean that fewer EVs can hit the road. Or maybe families can’t buy homes because the cost of building a home increases too much. That might mean that fewer people volunteer for the military because they are more concerned about the stability of their family – thus hurting our national security.
Both of these are possible outcomes of a tariff ridden economy, but we won’t know the real costs until it is too late. What we do know is that tariffs raise the cost of living, create inefficiencies, and that single moms are the ones that are most affected.
Tariffs don’t just go after the rich, tariffs raise costs across the economy. So, people living paycheck to paycheck, 46% of Americans, are the ones most affected. When the price of electricity goes up that is a problem. By some estimates single moms are 5 times more likely to live in poverty – meaning that these price increases disproportionately hurt them.
President Trump is attempting to use tariffs as a negotiating tool. Now, some might agree with what he is trying to do while others definitely do not, but the real question is whether tariffs are the right tactic. Some countries might give in, but when they don’t it means that we are at economic war. For conventional warfare, there is always a question about putting boots on the ground. For economic war, maybe we should ask about whether it is worth it or not to put single mothers on the front lines.
