Tariffs Won’t Help More Men Get Jobs
Trump is right to want to provide American men with better economic opportunities, but taxing imports will not help him get there.
Tariffs won’t help construction workers.
Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
Say this about Donald Trump: Even when he has crazy ideas — and his tariff policy certainly seems crazy — he is often trying to address a legitimate concern. In the case of tariffs, they are part of the president’s economic plan to provide men with better opportunities. It is a worthy goal, but tariffs will not help him reach it.
Some background: There is a sense that the globalization of the last several decades has mostly benefited the coastal elites, while the rest of the country has suffered with stagnating wages, job loss and drug addiction. It is not entirely true that trade is to blame, but there is no denying something is going wrong for many American men. Their participation in the labor market has been falling over time, suggesting they are not just unemployed, but leaving the labor force all together.