The American trade paradigm is shifting in favor of tariffs, and free trade ideologues are resorting to increasingly contrived arguments to oppose them. Insisting that tariffs harm growth and spawn economic inefficiency hasn’t worked very well—if the deindustrialization of the heartland was “efficient,” too many Americans have decided that they’d prefer to take their chances with tariffs. So, free trade true believers, attempting to read the MAGA room in the wake of yet another Trump electoral win, have come up with a new angle of attack: tariffs are actually a tool of “deep state” elites.
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