Trump’s Trade War Is Also a Class War
On this episode of Time of Monsters, Marshall Steinbaum on the president’s love of regressive taxes.
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Trump’s Trade War is Also a Class War | The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer
Donald Trump’s tariff war is usually framed in terms of how it would impact consumers and America’s relationship with other countries, but it is also part of a larger project to remake taxation policy. Trump is very explicit that he wants tariffs to replace personal and corporate taxes with tariffs as the main source of revenue. As such, tariffs are a sales tax, of a particularly regressive sort. I talk to Marshall Steinbaum, an economist at the University of Utah, about how tariff’s fit in with Trump’s larger social vision of a plutocratic society, something that can also be seen in how the White House is cracking down on student debt holders. We take up this and other economic matters, bringing a class analysis to the business news.
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U.S. President Donald Trump holds up a copy of a 2025 National Trade Estimate Report as he speaks during a “Make America Wealthy Again” trade announcement event in the Rose Garden at the White House on April 2, 2025 in Washington, DC.
(Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)Donald Trump’s tariff war is usually framed in terms of how it would impact consumers and America’s relationship with other countries, but it is also part of a larger project to remake taxation policy. Trump is very explicit that he wants tariffs to replace personal and corporate taxes, with tariffs as the main source of revenue. As such, tariffs are a sales tax, of a particularly regressive sort. I talk to Marshall Steinbaum, an economist at the University of Utah, about how tariffs fit in with Trump’s larger social vision of a plutocratic society, something that can also be seen in how the White House is cracking down on student debt holders. We take up this and other economic matters, bringing a class analysis to the business news.
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The Nation Podcasts
Here's where to find podcasts from The Nation. Political talk without the boring parts, featuring the writers, activists and artists who shape the news, from a progressive perspective.
Trump is Using Terrorist Charges to Wage Political War w/ Josh Kovensky | The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer
Over at Talking Points Memo, Josh Kovensky has written an essay on the Trump
administration’s use of anti-terrorism law to target political groups it doesn’t like.
In that piece, Kovensky notes,
"Across the country, federal prosecutors are upgrading what would have been routine
prosecutions into terrorism cases when they involve people President Trump has cast as his
political enemies.
It represents a dramatic departure from how the Justice Department has historically used the
federal material support for terrorism statute. For decades, counterterrorism prosecutors have
largely reserved the statute — 2339A — for the kinds of audacious plots that wreak real, lasting
damage or whose ambition forms the stuff of movie screenplays."
I spoke to Kovensky about his essay and the history and politics of this dangerous legal
innovation.
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