By now, we all know Donald Trump has an uncanny ability to survive the usual political rules. But will his Iowa allies?
Trump is on the cusp of announcing a major increase in taxes by instituting a broad new range of tariffs. And just a few months before the midterm congressional elections, no less.
The Wall Street Journal reported this week the Trump administration plans to impose new tariffs to replace the temporary measures that were put in place after the Supreme Court struck down his “emergency” import levies. In the meantime, it is investigating an expansion. This could result in an average US tariff of about 17%, up from about 11% today under the temporary measures, according to the Journal’s reporting.
That’s a huge tax increase. Still, I haven’t heard any protest from Iowa’s congressional delegation, even though we know how damaging Trump’s tariffs have been in Iowa.
Like other Americans, Iowans have absorbed the cost of higher import levies, with the price-tag last year coming in at $1,000 per household, according to the Tax Foundation.
This year, estimates are they will cost families $700.
Meanwhile, the promises Trump made that tariffs would spark a heyday in manufacturing have, at least so far, failed to come to fruition.
Manufacturing employment in Iowa, which already was struggling, dropped by more than 4,000 jobs over the past year. Nationwide, 75,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost since Trump became president.
This is not what I would call a heyday.
If this isn’t evidence enough, the Whirlpool plant in Middle Amana offers another prime example.
As Reuters reported last month:
If any company stood to gain from President Donald Trump’s trade war, it was Whirlpool and the workers assembling its iconic appliances in Iowa.
But at its “Big Blue” refrigerator plant, so named because of its robin’s-egg-colored siding, the company has cut more than half its nearly 2,000-strong workforce in the last year, despite tariffs championed by Trump to support U.S. manufacturing.
On Wednesday, a member of the Senate Finance Committee introduced legislation to rein in the president’s tariff powers. The proposal, by Ron Wyden, of Oregon, the panel’s top Democrat, would require congressional approval before a president could impose tariffs using certain legal authorities, according to CNBC.
This includes authorities in Trump’s trade arsenal.
“Donald Trump has abused every trade authority at his disposal, and he is now excavating a law from the Great Depression to once again impose vast, unilateral tariffs on products from one of our closest allies and trading partners,” Wyden said Tuesday, reacting to Trump’s announcement that he would impose new tariffs on Canada.
The Depression-era law Wyden is referring to is the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which was passed in 1930 and is one of the most discredited acts of Congress in the 20th Century.
Yet, this is what Trump is relying on, at least in part, to perpetuate his disastrous trade policies.
Chuck Grassley has long been a free trader, and he introduced a bipartisan bill of his own last year to rein in executive power over tariffs. But mostly Grassley has been deferential to Trump’s tariff scheme.
It goes without saying that if Barack Obama or Joe Biden had justified tariffs by relying on Smoot-Hawley, the Republican response would have been a lot different than it is today.
Just two years ago, Grassley said Smoot-Hawley, had “a great deal to do with the Great Depression.”
That Iowa’s congressional delegation is mostly standing mute as Trump continues to raise taxes on Iowa families and invokes a long-discredited law to justify even more is a testament to how much power the president maintains over the Republican voter base. If Ashley Hinson, Zach Nunn or Mariannette Miller-Meeks were to stand up for Iowa households and object to the new tariffs, Trump would surely turn on them. This is why they have been silent.
Iowans will pay the cost for Trump’s folly and our delegation’s deference.
The Congressional Budget Office last year said Trump’s tariff revenues will add up to $2.5 trillion between 2025 and 2035.
Most of the cost of the tariffs will fall on consumers, too. A Goldman Sachs report last year estimated American consumers would bear 55% of Trump’s tariff burden for 2025. Most of the rest of the cost is being picked up by American businesses (22%) and foreign exporters (18%).
The Constitution clearly gives Congress the power to impose tariffs, but Congress has given much of this power away over the years—and, more recently, Republicans have refused to speak out against Trump’s brazen use of tariffs, including those he unconstitutionally seized until the Supreme Court intervened.
I’m glad to see some members of Congress have introduced proposals to take some of this power back. Frankly, you would think others on Capitol Hill, particularly those who claim to be free traders, would voice more support for these efforts. If not only to restore Congress’s traditional authority but to save taxpayers money.
Yet they don’t. Their priorities lie elsewhere.
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Thanks, Ed, for once again highlighting our Iowa U.S. elected officials’ inaction of Trump’s actions that negatively affect the economic lives of Iowans.
Thanks Ed for again telling the truth. A tariff is a tax and to make matters worse it is very regressive. Republicans should wake up to the real world.