“High tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation by foreign countries and the triggering of fierce trade wars. Then the worst happens: markets shrink and collapse, businesses and industries shut down, and millions of people lose their jobs.” President Reagan
Was President Reagan predicting what would happen in Trump’s second term as president when he made a radio address about the dangers of high tariffs?
President Trump didn’t like Ontario Prime Minister Dog Ford’s posting of a 1987 radio address by President Reagan criticizing high tariffs that went viral because it was describing what was already happening with Trump’s illegal, retaliatory tariffs that are destroying the American economy and causing our allies to make deals with China.
It was obvious President Trump didn’t want his public to know that starting a tariff war with all 180 countries in the world would trigger “fierce trade wars” and sow economic chaos.
Add the job losses for “millions of people” his massive downsizing of the federal workforce that provides the benefits that protect all Americans, while attacking our institutions of higher learning that prepare us for the future, we can see where this can lead.
His actions are already contributing to a skilled worker shortage and the shrinkage of huge segments of the U.S. working age population with his attacks on immigrants that make up 40 percent of our agricultural workers and a large part of our service industry workers.
Is the chaos he is causing designed to destroy the U.S. economy as we know it, “markets shrink and collapse, businesses and industries shut down,” so that all or most power will be concentrated in the hands of the oligarchs and close allies that support him?
It happened in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Its collapse caused Russian oligarchs and Putin to snap up whole industries for pennies on the dollar, thus concentrating their wealth where Putin could control it.
Why can’t it happen here? Trump adores Putin as his model, but he would need a cowed tribe of supporters similar to Russia’s serb population, the serfs of old, liberated little more than 100 years ago, to sustain his power. Right now, it’s Trump’s White Christian Nationalists (like Putin’s Russian Orthodox supporters), but they are a small minority.
President Trump will only succeed in his scheme if he can convince enough Americans that his tariffs against the rest of the world (and higher inflation) are good for US because it would bring back better-paying industrial jobs to his base in the Midwest that had suffered from the globalization of manufacturing.
But that’s not what President Reagan said. He would also have to convince enough Americans that destroying large segments of the U.S. economy—in public health, environmental protection, social services—is worth the cost of higher tariffs, rather than live as his red state supporters have suffered under Republican rule; many with no minimum wage, minimal or no health care, no environmental protection from increasingly frequent natural disasters, and above all, a distrust in science that would provide them a better future.
We should ask ourselves, why would President Trump enact his agenda outside of most customs and laws, demolish the East Wing of the White House to build a 90,000 square foot ballroom without approved plans or permits?
Trump can only be stopped from his attempt to set up an American version of Putin’s Oligarchy if enough Americans see what is already happening.
Harlan Green © 2025
Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen
Populareconomicsblog 
