Former VA Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, a Trump-Supporting Republican, Agrees: “Tariffs Are Great – If You Like Raising Prices, Undermining Jobs, and Inhibiting Innovation”

The reason I’m posting this from former Virginia Lt. Governor Bill Bolling, a Trump-supporting Republican, isn’t because I like Bolling or think he knows what he’s talking about a lot of the time, but simply because:

1. Trump actually seems to be barreling ahead with his economically ruinous, moronic, ignorant plans to start a global trade war, slap massive tariffs – aka, TAXES on the American consumer! – on our biggest trading partners, drive up prices, drive down employment, and pretty much undo many of the benefits from trade and North American economic integration that we’ve seen for many years.
2. Bolling is a Republican and a Trump supporter, and most of those people have been utterly silent as Trump has said and done crazy, illegal, unconstitional, economically harmful, etc. things. So at least Bolling deserves credit (although Bolling isn’t in office anymore and presumably doesn’t plan to ever run for office again, so he feels a bit freer to criticize the Cult Leader?) for contradicting Trump on something – in this case, tariffs/trade.
3. Bolling IS correct that a trade war “will drive up the cost of goods being exported from the U.S, and that could drive down the consumption of American products in these countries and have an adverse impact on our own domestic economic production.” He’s also correct that “tariff wars rarely benefit anyone. They drive up the cost of goods and services, and they drive down economic production. Everybody loses.” Another good point by Bolling (although note that inflation is waaayyyy down from where it was a couple years ago, about 2.6% on an annual basis in December 2024): “in a time when inflation has already had a significant impact on the cost of goods and sevices, the last thing we should do is pursue policies that will further drive up costs.”
4. The article that Bolling references, by the George W. Bush Institute, nails it on this: “…tariff barriers weaken the middle class. In the short term, they raise consumer prices. In the medium term, they weaken the nation’s manufacturing competitiveness and undermine middle-class jobs. In the long term, they inhibit innovation and the emergence of the next generation of middle-class jobs, weakening our children’s toe-hold in the middle class and sapping the nation’s prosperity over time.” In short, as the headline says, “Tariffs Are Great – If You Like Raising Prices, Undermining Jobs, and Inhibiting Innovation.” 
5.  Having said all that, Bolling is 100% wrong that  there is “undoubtedly some validity to Trump’s concerns” about “1) current trade imbalances with these countries, 2) their failure to crack down on fentanyl being brought into the U.S. from their countries, and 3) in the case of Canada, and in particular Mexico, their failure to secure their border and prevent illegal immigrants from coming into America.” That’s all either complete horsesh**, misleading or mostly false. On the issue of trade imbalances, Trump’s obsession with that demonstrates that he either has never taken an international economics course or, if he ever did, completely failed to understand it. As for the “failure to crack down on fentanyl being brought into the U.S. from their countries,” that’s complete nonsense when it comes to Canada, and even in cases where there’s validity to the concerns, what on earth does starting a trade/tariff war do to solve the problem??? Finally, whatever you think about immigration/the border – and note that Trump himself forced Congressional Republicans to kill a tough, bipartisan deal on securing the border and reforming our immigration system, simply because he prefers to demagogue on the issue, knowing that it’s potent politically – how on earth does it help to start a tariff/trade war that will raise prices for AMERICANS, hurt AMERICA’s economy, cost AMERICANS jobs, etc? Just total craziness, and Bolling should be calling that out, not blathering about how Trump’s concerns are “valid.”