President Donald Trump is now following California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s playbook of making things more expensive for people and then trying to give away taxpayer money to make it all better.
Trump’s tariffs have led to increased costs for consumers in the past year, as everyone predicted they would. This is obvious to everyone, including the Trump administration, which is rolling back tariffs on some products to help ease the cost of living for people. High costs helped Democrats avoid potential devastating election losses in Virginia and New Jersey, as voters blamed Republicans for the continued financial strain they are feeling.
BESSENT ADMITS WHAT TRUMP WON’T: TARIFFS RAISE PRICES
In an effort to win those voters back, Trump and his team have rolled back some tariffs (good) and taken a page from the Biden administration’s playbook of telling voters prices are down regardless of what those voters are seeing at the supermarket (bad). But Trump’s latest idea is to dish out $2,000 checks, supposedly funded by the tariffs, to help people with the cost of living.
This is straight out of Gavin Newsom’s playbook. Newsom imposed excessive shutdowns on Californians during the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to businesses shuttering for good and people losing their jobs. These shutdowns continued for over a year, driving up California’s already high cost of living. Newsom, who was facing a recall at the time, essentially tried to bribe voters into forgiving him by dishing out $600 stimulus checks to two-thirds of the state’s residents. In that case, Newsom imposed a terrible policy and then “gifted” people back the money they already paid in taxes, acting as if this was some grand, gracious gift rather than an attempt to get voters off his back.
INFLATION COOLED — BUT YOUR GROCERY BILL NEVER DID
This is the same boat Trump is in now. Trump’s tariffs, like Newsom’s lockdowns, were predictably terrible and made things more expensive for everybody. Trump now wants to give out taxpayer money to try and make it all better. It is an entirely unnecessary “solution” to a problem of his own creation, and it will have the added effect of increasing inflation.
If Trump had simply avoided imposing tariffs or used them more strategically than the blanket tariffs he imposed, we would not be in this situation in the first place. Instead, he burned voters who trusted him to bring costs down after Biden’s presidency, and is now going to try and sell people on stimulus checks as the big fix. It is bad governance, and it isn’t great politics either, which is to be expected when a political mediocrity like Gavin Newsom thought it was a great idea.