Tucker On Tariffs
Well said.
| Commentary |
| Does the Left Support Worker Exploitation? |
| It’s no secret that the stock market has reacted poorly to the Trump administration’s “Liberation Day” tariffs. It makes sense why. Investors hate uncertainty, and America ushering in an entirely new economic vision, regardless of what that vision is, was always going to cause a shock. One of the conglomerates experiencing a nosedive is Nike. According to Schaeffer’s Investment Research, the company’s stock sank to a six-year low after the tariff announcement and now carries a 23.5% year-to-date deficit. The reason for this is straightforward. Nike uses cheap foreign labor to create its products, exploiting international markets to get away with paying its workforce a fraction of what American laborers would require. This is no secret. Nike reportedly employs 108,000 Chinese workers, paying them an average annual salary of $10,000. Its American employees, by contrast, tend to make nearly seven times that sum. This makes Washington’s new effort to incentivize companies to manufacture their products in the U.S. a bad situation for Nike. And they’re not the only ones. Reutersreported on Thursday that “Shares in Nike, Adidas, and Puma dropped sharply after Vietnam was targeted with a 46% tariff rate, Cambodia with 49%, Bangladesh with 37% and Indonesia with 32%, while Trump hiked tariffs on China by an extra 34 percentage points, following the earlier 20% tariffs.” Take a step back and ask yourself what this really means. A $10,000 salary is not a livable wage. It equates to less than $5 an hour, and that’s if the worker doesn’t take a single minute off all year. No vacations. No sick days. Nothing. Just a life of thanklessly slaving away in his employer’s overheated mines. Among other things, the White House’s pursuit of “fair trade” aims to end that inhumanity. The U.S. should not reward companies for treating human beings like soulless cogs, easily replaceable and whose hours are worth nothing more than five measly dollars. Is that what American neoliberals want? Whether they realize it or not, Democrats complaining about the Trump tariffs are by definition advocating for the West’s continued exploitation of effective slave labor. They may attend pride parades and post social justice graphics on social media, but they quickly jump ship as soon as a policy that will drive real change threatens their precious wallets. Emphasizing this could be a good way for Republicans to regain the high ground in our country’s economic debate. Will the tariffs create jobs? They should. Do they put America first? Without a doubt. But they’re also moral. America is no longer interested in subsidizing the treatment of workers as worthless servants. Companies that refuse to oblige? Fine. Enjoy your big, beautiful tariff. |
John Barleycorn 
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