Trump replaced his temporary 10% tariffs with new levies on dozens of countries Friday, and the establishment press is howling about household costs while ignoring why these tariffs exist — to protect American industry and workers from decades of globalist exploitation.
The new tariffs, ranging from 10% to 12.5%, took effect Friday after midnight and are designed to be more legally durable after the Supreme Court struck down the previous batch, according to NPR. The current average tariff rate sits at 11%, per the Budget Lab at Yale University, which also estimates tariffs impose an additional cost of about $1,100 per household. NPR ran five takeaways on the new tariffs, and every single one focused on how they hurt consumers. Not one word about what untrammeled free trade did to factory towns across this country.
Meanwhile, Trump was making a point the press dismissed as a joke. At an Oval Office press conference, he said he may need to impose tariffs on Mexico "because of the lettuce" and on Canada "because of the smoke," as USA Today reported. The press corps chuckled. The numbers aren't funny. A CDC update released the same day reported 4,173 laboratory-confirmed cases of cyclosporiasis — a parasitic infection causing severe diarrhea — since May 1, with an additional 7,400 unconfirmed cases, many in Michigan and Ohio. Cases have been reported in 41 states. That tainted produce came from somewhere, and Mexico is a likely source. As for the smoke, Canadian wildfires have repeatedly triggered air quality alerts across the United States. In 2023, roughly 75 million Americans were under such alerts. On July 15, Toronto had the worst air pollution in the world; New York City ranked fifth, according to IQAir. Trump said he told Canada "they have to do something about it." That's leverage, not lunacy.
NPR also warns that tariffs make it harder for the Fed to cut interest rates. Fed Chair Kevin Warsh, sworn in back in May, faces inflation concerns even as Trump wants lower rates. Cornell professor Eswar Prasad told NPR that tariffs "are certainly going to drive up the prices of imports, which is going to add to inflation." Notice the framing: imports. The assumption baked into every free-trade argument is that Americans are destined to buy foreign goods forever, and that making foreign goods more expensive is inherently bad. The alternative — making things here, employing Americans here — never enters the analysis.
The Budget Lab at Yale's $1,100 figure will be cited everywhere. What NPR doesn't tell you is who funds the Budget Lab, what its track record is, or whether it has ever met a tariff it liked. When the Supreme Court struck down Trump's earlier tariffs, businesses got refunds — and NPR framed that as a "reprieve." When Trump responded with new ones, NPR called it "prolonged uncertainty." The courts may yet challenge these new tariffs too. The question of whether nine unelected justices should block a president's trade policy — a core constitutional power of the executive — goes unasked.
The free-trade consensus has had its run. Decades of offshoring, trade deficits, and industrial decline later, the American worker is supposed to worry about the price of imported avocados while the factories stay shuttered. Trump's tariffs are a lever, not a panacea. But they're pointed in the right direction — at countries that take American access for granted while sending tainted food and smoky air. The press can keep counting pennies at the register. The country is counting the cost of a trade regime that sold it out.
