The Supreme Court is currently involved with deciding if President Trump has the authority to unilaterally initiate tariffs on any countries without congressional approval — never mind that he did it in his prior term to very little argument. In fact, the tariffs worked so well that the Biden administration left many of them in place. This money will pay down the debt, something most Democrats and Republicans wanted.
I am a manufacturer’s representative for various U.S. and foreign companies that manufacture inexpensive home-decor and seasonal products. I was greatly impacted by the tariffs, especially the initially high levels before they went down a little. Many of the major U.S. chains stopped ordering, or at the very least told us to hold up making products or shipping them to the U.S. as they waited for the tariffs to go down. Since I am paid a commission only after products are shipped and then have to be paid by the U.S. importer, I lost income.
And yet, I was and am fully committed to Trump’s tariff policy. This is because I am an American citizen before I am a salesman. If previous administrations had treated trade as the national security issue it is, maybe something would have been done prior to Trump.
As the president has said, “We were being ripped off” in that many countries had much higher duty or tariffs on our products going to them than we had with their products coming to us. Many pricey items such as automobiles could not be exported to some countries because of their high tariffs.
In 2024, Americans bought roughly 16 million automobiles, SUVs and light trucks, and about 8 million were made — or at least assembled — in the U.S. Of that 8 million, about half used foreign parts. So, about one in four of them sold are fully U.S. made. This is just one industry that has been decimated by our policy of free trade in the face of foreign tariffs.
What is rarely discussed is another of Trump’s reasons for tariffs — they are one of his primary ways to get concessions from almost every other country. Many of these concessions come in the form of national security, such as Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping’s recent agreement that China would exert more pressure on stopping the precursors of fentanyl being shipped to Mexico and Canada, which end up killing hundreds of thousands.
There are many other examples. Violence along the India-Pakistan border only stopped after Trump threatened that if they don’t halt the fighting, we will stop all trade with both of their nations. We have done this and similar tactics over and over in the past nine months. We are getting agreements with Thailand and Malaysia for critical minerals that we need — minerals that China planned to hold back from the whole world. China has suspended this edict after meeting with Trump — all because of tariffs. Just prior to this, we made a deal with Australia on minerals also.
We are getting trillions on investment in the U.S. by many countries, all because of tariffs and because every country wants to trade with the world’s largest consumer, the United States. Does anyone actually believe that trillions of U.S. investment from South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and more would be happening if not for Trump? All of these countries will be building infrastructure in the U.S. employing millions of U.S. workers who will be earning a nice living and paying taxes to support our country. This is not going to happen overnight, just as the loss of infrastructure and workers did not happen overnight.
Regardless of how the Supreme Court decides, don’t expect any consumers to get money back if the tariffs have to be stopped. I say that because tariffs are not paid by consumers. They are paid by the importers who then pass on a fraction of the cost to consumers. If the government is forced to return those tariffs to the importers, does anyone think those companies are going to lower their prices?
If you do, I’ve got a bridge to sell you — and I’ll be tacking on a duty fee.
Mark Goldstein is a resident of Boca Raton.
