“The golden age of America begins right now,” President Donald Trump declared on Jan. 20, 2025. “From this day forward, our country will flourish and be respected.”.
Throughout Trump’s election campaign, he vigorously emphasized that America will be “great again,” promising that once he is elected, America will have prosperous years to come. However, since his election, our country has been on a social and economic decline. So I ask, are we great yet?
On April 2, Trump announced a ten percent tax on all imported goods that would take effect on April 5, because other countries were “cheating” America. But, his “reciprocal tariffs” were based on trade imbalances, not actual unfair trade practices. Essentially, most of the countries were simply selling more to us than they were buying. CNN confirms this with Mike O’Rourke, Chief Marketing Strategist of Jones Trading, stating that, “The Trump administration is specifically targeting nations with large trade surpluses with the U.S. relative to their exports to the U.S..”
We have seen the damage that excessive tariffs can cause to our economy as well as the global economy with the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930. As a point of reference, “The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act added about 20% to the United States import duties on foreign agricultural products and manufactured goods… [which] strained the economies of countries already suffering from the Great Depression and the costs of rebuilding after World War I,” as stated by Investopedia. Now, Trump has imposed a very similar executive order imposing several global tariffs that have exponentially hurt our economy, despite promising that they would help “Make America Great Again.”
Trump’s tariffs have heavily targeted China, despite the fact that China is one of the largest buyers of American exports. Trump has been the direct reason as to why we are now involved in a trade war with China (again), which has resulted in them imposing a 125 percent tax on U.S. goods, and in return he has imposed a 145 percent tax on all Chinese imports. “Ultimately, China needs our dollars less than we need its goods, minerals, and industrial inputs,” Eric Levitz explains. Due to the fact that China relies much less on U.S. goods while the U.S. relies heavily on Chinese imports, shows China is in a much stronger position to withstand the economic pressures that come from a trade war than we are.
It’s quite ironic that these tariffs, meant to “Make America Great Again,” have actually hurt us exponentially. The very ideology Trump built his movement on is being undermined by the policies he has put in place. This trade war with China has the potential to severely undermine the U.S. economy, especially if China stops importing from us. Millions of American jobs, particularly in farming, manufacturing and technology, rely on exports to China and would be at serious risk. U.S. companies also depend on trade with China to help offset the massive volume of Chinese imports. When American businesses lose access to such a large market, they lose opportunities to grow, innovate and reinvest in the U.S. economy.
Besides Trump upsetting one of the countries we rely on the most, Trump also set in motion a large possibility for the one of the worst recessions to occur since the Great Depression. Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, explains how “he sees the U.S. economy likely headed to [a] recession as President Donald Trump’s tariffs roil financial markets,” CNBC reports. Time Magazine also says, “[Ivan] Png, [an economist at the National University of Singapore], predicts that a potential global recession resulting from the tariffs would be of a similar scale to the 2008 global financial crisis, which triggered an eighteen-month Great Recession.”
Although Trump did place a 90-day pause on the reciprocal tariffs on all countries with the exception of China on April 9, he still caused a global ruckus that resulted in widespread economic instability, shaking global markets and a push on America towards recession. Ironically, the chaos he unleashed hurt American workers and businesses, contradicting the very idea of “Making America Great Again.” So I ask again, are we great yet?
