Josh Barro once said “Trump has only taken the dignity from those who gave it willingly and Jeb Bush.” What he meant is that while Jeb Bush was utterly humiliated by 2016 in general, most of the Republican bigwigs suffered reputational damage not so much from Trump himself, but from their own insistence that he was dangerous, economically illiterate, but also the only logical choice for president. The two-faced insistence that tariffs were stupid and dumb and anti-business, followed by an abrupt about-face on the subject once Trump won the nomination, did huge reputational damage to the GOP in the business community. Just as their two-faced-ness on Trump’s other “novel” policies did damage to them in the immigrant community, the LGBT community, and so on.

Biden later gave his dignity to Trump too, as I have repeatedly dunked on Biden for insisting that tariffs are bad and harmful and must not be done, only to turn about and support them himself once he got into office.

I’ve said before that I think a large part of the literati’s opposition to tariffs is not so much that Trump is *wrong* about them, but that Trump is *right*. The “textbook” definition of tariffs is what Biden and the EU said back in 2019, tariffs only hurt the country which puts them up, they are a tax on your own consumers, they don’t hurt any other country more than they hurt you. Trump disagrees, he thinks that tariffs hurt other countries more than they hurt America.

And now it seems Ursula Von Der Leyen has likewise beclowned herself at the altar of Trump. VdL, for those who don’t know, is the top dog of the EU pantheon, and a long-time critic of Trump’s tariffs. But now, in the name of protecting EU business, she too has begun putting up new and bigger tariffs on foreign product. Because she, like Biden, and like Trump, all seem to agree that in reality tariffs hurt the other countries more than they hurt you. And that the damage they do to your own country is “worth it” in order to protect local industry.

I should be aghast. But I’m not even surprised. The free trade consensus of the late 20th century has died entirely because its adherents were always two-faced in their support of it. While the EU preaches free trade, they have always erected huge tariff and non-tariff barriers to protect local industries, especially farming, from foreign commerce. Likewise, the Bidenist democrats may have paid lip service to free trade, but it and economic growth in general always sat at the bottom of their hierarchy of social good. High prices are always worth paying for some other social good, in this framing. And tariffs therefore are not tools of economic self-sabotage but rather can be a means to whatever social end you want, whether it’s protecting rust belt jobs or competing with Chinese solar panels.

Free trade fell apart in the world because it seems its adherents never really believed it. Every politician treated it like a little white lie: we’ll all pretend that tariffs are always bad and wrong so that the hoi polloi don’t demand we start erecting tariffs and eventually drag us into a trade war. But when the chips are down the white lie crumbles, and now tariffs are a part of everyday politics. And more and more politicians beclown themselves by having argued so forcefully against Trump’s tariffs and then arguing even more forcefully in favor of their own.