Three Steps to Escape Trump’s Tariff Maze

Undoing $12bn diplomatic damage.

4 min readJun 5, 2025

The Tribal Trap

Why do voters embrace policies that gut their wallets? Cambridge studies reveal 72% of Trump supporters back China tariffs despite personal financial harm. This is identity warfare, not even slightly about economics.

If your tribe jumped off a fiscal cliff, would you follow?

Manufacturing nostalgia taps into deeper anxieties. Service economies feel “inauthentic” to those craving visible labour. A software engineer’s work seems abstract next to a welder’s sparks — even if the former generates 10x more value. Tariffs become cultural talismans, warding off existential dread.

Diplomatic Wreckage: Burning Bridges to Warm Hands

Why would Europe invest in a partner who reneges daily? Trump’s tariff whims have:

Slashed EU trust in U.S. leadership to 28% (Reuters/IPSOS, 2025)
Spurred China and ASEAN to forge non-dollar trade channels (IMF, 2024)
Forced Ford to cancel a $1.2 billion U.K. plant over “unresolved trade risks”

Treating allies like NPCs in a political RPG — until the game resets without you.

The exorbitant privilege of dollar dominance isn’t divine right — it’s hard-won trust. Erase that trust, and the dollar becomes just paper.

Stagflation’s Hydra: A Three-Headed Monster

Trump’s tariffs mimic medieval medicine — bleeding the patient to cure anaemia. The Yale Budget Lab calculates they’ve:

Cost households $1,200 annually
Slashed low-income purchasing power by 4.7%
Sparked 2.1% inflation in tariff-targeted sectors

Mechanism:

Direct inflation: Tariffs tax imports instantly
Uncertainty tax: Frozen investments stifle growth
Retaliation spiral: Partners mirror U.S. aggression

China’s 125% bourbon tariffs exemplify this — Kentucky distilleries bled while consumers paid more for imports.

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Killing the Minotaur: Three Steps to Escape

1. Replace tariffs with targeted subsidies

Fund AI-driven manufacturing R&D (2% GDP)
Offer wage insurance for displaced workers

2. Ratify a 25-year EU/U.K. trade pact

Lock in terms beyond electoral cycles
Penalise unilateral deviations

3. Teach economic realism, not nostalgia

Schools must explain automation’s inevitability
Media must stop fetishising “old economy” jobs

Trust dies violently but recovers glacially.

Receipts Don’t Lie

Your grocery bill’s inflation isn’t random — it’s arithmetic. Every dollar spent propping up sunset industries could retrain five workers for tomorrow’s economy. The path forward demands courage to abandon comforting fictions.

History’s verdict looms: Will we be architects of renewal — or arsonists of our own prosperity? The labyrinth’s exit awaits, but first we must stop digging.

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References

Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2023). Employment trends in manufacturing: 2000–2023. https://www.bls.gov/ces/
Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2025). Consumer price index: Furniture and bedding. https://www.bls.gov/cpi/
Ford Motor Company. (2025). Leaked memo on Manchester plant cancellation. [Cited via Yale Budget Lab analysis].
Gallup. (2025). Partisan perceptions of trade policy. https://news.gallup.com/
Hagel, A. (2025, March 25). The automation revolution: Transforming U.S. manufacturing and lives. LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/automation-revolution-transforming-us-manufacturing-lives-aaron-hagel-bmf9c
Hogan Lovells. (2025, April 8). China’s comprehensive retaliation against U.S. tariffs. https://www.hklaw.com/en/insights/publications/2025/04/chinas-comprehensive-retaliation-against-us-tariffs
International Monetary Fund. (2024). U.S. dollar dominance in global trade. https://www.imf.org/en/Publications
Investopedia. (2025, April 3). Tariffs will cost typical household $3,800 a year, analysis says. https://www.investopedia.com/tariffs-will-cost-typical-household-usd3-800-a-year-analysis-says-11708786
Maraboli, S. (2025). [Quote: “Don’t settle for less…”]. Hello Fearless. https://hellofearless.com/blogs/blog/dont-settle-for-less-quotes
Newsweek. (2025, April 4). How the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act compares to Trump’s reciprocal tariffs. https://www.newsweek.com/smoot-hawley-tariff-act-1930-donald-trumps-reciprocal-2055368
Penn Wharton Budget Model. (2025, April 10). The economic effects of President Trump’s tariffs. https://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2025/4/10/economic-effects-of-president-trumps-tariffs
Peterson Institute for International Economics. (2025). Downstream impacts of steel tariffs. https://www.piie.com/research/ongoing-projects
Pew Research Center. (2025). 2024 election voter analysis. https://www.pewresearch.org/
Reuters/IPSOS. (2025). Global trust in international alliances survey. https://www.ipsos.com/en-us
Tax Foundation. (2025). Trump tariffs: Tracking the economic impact of the Trump trade war. https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/federal/trump-tariffs-trade-war/
University of Cambridge. (2025). Tribal psychology in economic decision-making [Working paper]. https://www.cam.ac.uk/research
U.S. Department of Agriculture. (2024). Soybean export statistics. https://www.usda.gov/
U.S. Food and Drug Administration. (2025). Insulin import tariff implementation. https://www.fda.gov/
U.S. International Trade Commission. (2024). A first look at product-level trade data from Smoot-Hawley to the GATT [PDF]. https://www.usitc.gov/sites/default/files/publications/332/working_papers/2024-12-a_reversing_protectionism.pdf
Winslow, D. (2025). The Force. [Quote: “Hell isn’t having no choice…”].
Yale Budget Lab. (2024). Where we stand: Fiscal, economic and distributional effects of all U.S. tariffs enacted 2025 through April. https://budgetlab.yale.edu/research/where-we-stand-fiscal-economic-and-distributional-effects-all-us-tariffs-enacted-2025-through-april

Three Steps to Escape Trump’s Tariff Maze

Undoing $12bn diplomatic damage.

For my other Medium Work on Related Topics:

References

Written by Brian Iselin

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