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Traditional Republicans have certain core principals. Individual rights, strong national defense, and fiscal responsibility are three that come to mind. The Republican Party at the National, State and Executive level are not acting within those beliefs. Based on their votes or non-votes they are simply going along with trump and his protectionist policies.
To begin with Republican members U.S. Congress are blindly following the lead of the chaotic trump administration as it radically expands the use of executive privilege usurping many of the responsibilities reserved to it by the Founders. Case in point are Tariffs. Republicans have traditionally supported “Free Trade” of which tariffs are anathema! As I have said before trump if he has any philosophy except himself is pursuing a mis mash of policies including tariffs because he believes America has been cheated by foreign nations with their tariffs and Value Added Taxes (VATs). Accordingly, and contrary to nearly all economists he has unilaterally levied non-sensical tariffs on our friends worldwide while leaving out Russia and North Korea! Doesn’t that seem like my grandmother would say “bass ackwards!). He plays footsie with dictators and punishes some of our closest friends Canada and Great Britian to name just too.
Tariffs are a Tax on the American people make no mistake. Our trading partners are meeting trump’s tariffs with matching or greater tariffs of their own. Undoubtedly, these tariffs will increase prices in the U.S and stoke inflation the very thing he promised to tame within the first “three days” of his presidency! The most discouraging fact is that he told us exactly what he was going to do and still a plurality of the American people voted for him! As a student of political science and a politician myself (yes, I am one of those dirty rotten scoundrels) I know that Americans vote their “pocketbook” above all else! Even so, some of the diehards trumpers are ok with it because they say in the long run the tariffs will work! In my opinion in the “long run” we shall all be dead! His actions are creating havoc with the stock markets which are the “canary in the coal mine” prediction of future economic activity. A recession is on the way and all of you who voted for him are responsible! Markets hate uncertainty and trump uses chaos as his way of gaining control over our national government.
The only thing we can do now is to pressure our congressmen and women so that they will re-take tariffs as their authority. Fortunately, a few R’s in the House and Senate finally realize that and are proposing legislation to take that authority back. Unfortunately, they are too few. Most of our elected Republicans are afraid of trump’s wrath and thus are going along with this madness. Even Senator Rand Paul, a libertarian with whom I rarely agree has stood in the well and criticized these actions in a clear and meaningful way. In addition I recently watched an old video of Ronald Reagan explaining why he was against tariffs. The “Great Communicator” laid it out in very plain and clear logic why tariffs are bad.
This is just one of the terrible authoritarian policies trump is pursuing. Remember he told us he wanted to be a dictator, and he is governing just like that. It is our responsibility to bring as much pressure as humanly possible for Congress to regain its checks and balances authority and rein in this terrible president!
