In 2018, telling us that “trade wars are good, and easy to win,” then-US-president Donald Trump imposed 15-25% tariffs (versus the previous rate of 10% and the average US tariff of 1.6%) on various Chinese goods, ranging from “dental cements and other dental fillings” to “Trout, fresh or chilled, excluding fillets, other meat portions, livers and roes.”

China wasn’t the only target.  Trump also imposed a 20% tariff on Canadian lumber.

Turns out (as if we didn’t already know from previous experiences) that trade wars are bad and nearly impossible to “win,” if “winning” means making the citizens of the country imposing tariffs more prosperous.

Sure, SOME people — the owners of, and some of the workers in, the industries Trump claimed to be “protecting” — came out ahead. But everyone else lost.

Trump’s tariffs aren’t the only reasons that the stuff you buy (especially stuff made of steel or wood) is more expensive now than in 2018. But they’re among those reasons.

Four months into his presidency, Joe Biden seems disinclined to roll Trump’s tariffs back and bring these ruinous trade wars to an end.

Why? Because in one key area, Trump and Biden were competing for the same “voter base.” That area is the Rust Belt, and the base is industrial labor. Trump won the 2016 election on the back of what we used to call “Reagan Democrats.” Like Reagan, Trump carried those states by promising to bring jobs “back” from abroad. And this has always been part of Biden’s pitch as well, a pitch he’s used to bring organized labor in on his side in every campaign for office he’s ever run.

Yes, Trump and Biden both pretend that it’s  “China,” not you, paying those tariffs.

But according to Moody’s Investors Service, more than 90% of the tariffs on “China” are actually absorbed by US importers of Chinese goods in the form of higher prices. And guess who those importers are passing the price increases onto?

You, that’s who.

Every extra penny you shell out for every good you buy in which tariffs are involved is essentially a campaign contribution to whichever politician keeps (or promises to keep) those tariffs in place. That includes domestically produced goods whose makers can jack up their prices because tariffs raised their foreign competitors’ costs.

Tariffs are the domestic equivalent of foreign economic sanctions, which in turn are the economic equivalent of war. No, not war on “China.” War on you.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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On May 23, a fighter jet intercepted Ryanair Flight 4978 as it was about to exit Belarus’s airspace en route from Athens, Greece to Vilnius, Lithuania. Citing a supposed bomb threat (apparently contrived by regime agents on board the plane), Belarus air traffic control ordered the Boeing 737 to turn around and land in Minsk.

On the ground, regime police entered the plane and abducted opposition journalist Roman Protasevich and his girlfriend, Sofia Sapega. Belarus’s state media reports that the hijacking/abduction was carried out on the personal orders of President Alexander Lukashenko.

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken (rightly) called the operation a “shocking act.”

Ursula von der Leyen, president of the EU Commission, tweeted (correctly) that it was “outrageous and illegal” and that Protasevich “must be released immediately.” That’s hard to disagree with.

Unfortunately, neither the US, nor several EU regimes, have any business grandstanding on the matter. They’ve pulled the same kind of stunt before, at least as recently as eight years ago.

In July 2013, Bolivian President Evo Morales’s plane left Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport en route back to La Paz.  The Dassault Falcon 900 FAB-001 was forced to land in Austria after being refused entry into French, Italian, Portuguese, and Italian airspace.

Why? Because while in Russia, Morales had indicated (in an interview with Russian state media) his willingness to offer asylum to American whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The US government, in the words of Jen Psaki (currently White House Press Secretary, but back then a State Department spokesperson) had  “been in contact with a range of countries across the world who had any chance of having Mr. Snowden land or even transit through their countries.”

Austrian authorities claim they searched the plane for Snowden. Bolivian authorities say that Morales refused to allow a search. But either way there’s little doubt that several EU regimes, at the request (implicit or explicit) of the US regime, colluded to force a plane — and not just any old regular plane, but a diplomatically protected plane — to land in an effort to help abduct a political refugee.

No, I’m not defending Lukashenko. He’s not very defensible. I hope that he can be pressured into freeing Protasevich and Sapega alive and unharmed.

But if the “leaders of the free world” didn’t act exactly like Lukashenko whenever it suits them or serves their interests, they’d be in a much better position to mobilize global action to achieve that outcome.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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On May 5, Hamas commander Mohammed Deif issued a warning to Israel’s government: Unless Israeli police and troops stopped attacking Palestinians in Jerusalem — including not just those protesting against the regime’s theft of their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood on behalf of Israeli “settlers,” but also worshipers at al-Aqsa mosque, one of Islam’s most sacred sites — rockets would fly.

On the same day, the Biden administration notified Congress of its approval for Boeing’s sale of $735 worth of Joint Direct Attack Munitions to the Israeli regime.

The Israelis ignored Deif’s warning and continued their abuses. The rockets flew. And, in the name “self-defense,” prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the war he badly needs to distract from his recent election defeat and his ongoing corruption trial.

As I write this, more than 200 Palestinian Arabs (including 59 children) lie dead in Gaza, as do ten Israelis (including two children).

President Biden says he supports a cease-fire, but his UN ambassador blocked a UN Security Council resolution calling for one.  And those Boeing munitions are presumably on their way to help keep up the carnage for as long as possible.

Let’s at least be honest about those weapons. The Israelis aren’t really  buying them. You are.

Each year, the US government dispenses $3.8 billion of your money in “military aid” to the Israeli government. The string attached to that aid is that the Israelis have to use it to buy American (rather than, say, Russian or Chinese) arms.

In fact, that’s one of the main arguments that supporters of the aid put up when people object to the US government handing out such big welfare checks: It’s not really aid to the Israelis, they say, it’s actually just corporate welfare for American “defense” contractors, creating jobs right here in the good ol’ US of A.

This is supposed to make you feel better about the whole thing, I guess. You shouldn’t , though. If you think about it, every dollar funneled into artificially “creating jobs” in the “defense” industry is a dollar that could have instead been used by you to buy the things you actually want and need, creating real jobs providing those goods and services in the process.

But even if the corporate welfare angle did make sense, it also reveals that you, the American taxpayer, are financing the half-filling of body bags with the the bodies of children.

Yep, that’s your tax dollars at work, saving the political neck of Israel’s answer to Saddam Hussein.

I suspect that may not be what Oliver Wendell Holmes had in mind when he told us that “taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society.” If you share my suspicion,  let “your representatives” in Washington know.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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