A budget resolution passed by the House of Representatives last week with the narrowest of margins has left conservatives queasy because of the usual devil’s bargain embedded in the legislation, once again exemplifying Washington’s structural faults.
The budget resolution, backed by President Donald J. Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), includes $4.5 trillion in tax cuts over the next 10 years and supposedly will eliminate $2 trillion in spending while raising the national debt ceiling by $4 trillion. In other words, it will give the American people some short-term structural relief while facilitating the spending binge that remains the bane of fiscal conservatives.
Tackling government spending will be a gargantuan task, and it cannot be achieved until America’s economic pillars are sound. When the industrial base is devastated, it forces the public to resort to a consumption-based economy propped up by debt. This has been the status quo since the advent of NAFTA during the Clinton administration. Subsequent decades have squandered America’s potential in favor of short-term enablement of consumers’ desires at the expense of structural security.
President Trump has the tool to level the playing field and undo this tremendous damage: the tariff. The corporate hegemon bemoans the tariff as heresy to the golden free market calf, which he venerates above all else, but it remains an indisputable fact that tariffs will have certain effects when applied appropriately. In the long term, they may impede the efforts of an extremely profit-seeking wealthy elite, but what is best for the many in growing a stable and broadly prosperous society must be prioritized over the avarice of the few.
While do-gooders at home have created increasingly complex bureaucratic structures that disincentivize American production, they encourage rampant growth of industry overseas without similar controls. In particular, the Chinese regulatory structure remains hypercompetitive and anti-worker, sacrificing individuals’ liberties for the good of the collective, namely the raw economic power of the Chinese Communist Party. A casual observer sees the plain results: disgusting air quality and putrid environmental standards, complemented by a pathetic lack of worker protections.
For years, Democrats have urged Americans to punish themselves for pollution; that’s why we don’t have straws or showers that work properly anymore. A pollution tariff could punish China, leveling the playing field and creating a fairer marketplace. Data shows that Republicans already instinctively support the idea. According to a Dec. 2024 study by Public Opinion Strategies, 80 percent of Republicans believe China’s lax pollution laws give them a competitive advantage over America. The survey also shows that 77 percent of Republicans support a pollution tariff to put China in check, disincentivizing their economic practices that harm the environment and returning clean manufacturing jobs back to America where they belong. Similar views are widely represented in broader circles, including among Independents and other political moderates; in general, fair-minded Americans recognize that China is not playing by the same rules.
President Trump can create incentives via tariffs that protect the environment better than any so-called climate change mandate without impeding the prosperity and economic liberty of the American people. Right now, China grows its economy, leveraging worker conditions far worse than the American Industrial Revolution-era labor practices that Democrats whine about and insinuate that Republicans wish to return. These opportunistic Democrats turn a blind eye to China because they feel the ends justify the means when it comes to deindustrializing America and subjugating our nation to a globalist order. But an unassailable case can be made that a world dominated by China is a dirtier one, and a pollution tariff represents a sterling example of how populist economics can solve problems that transcend the economy.
A permanent pollution tariff on China would be a critical step towards ending the structural imbalance that keeps American manufacturing non-competitive. In time, this will obviate the need for continuous debt accumulation at the national level by ensuring that we rely on our most reliable and soundest source for manufactured goods: our fellow Americans.