The Price Is Right

A few observations about tariffs and what they mean for American greatness.

“This is the Oprah SOTU,” tweeted New York Post columnist John Podhoretz earlier this week. Presumably, he was commenting on the parade of ordinary Americans featured in President Donald Trump’s address to the joint session of Congress on Tuesday — a volleyball player who’d been maimed by a transgender opponent, the relatives of people who’d been brutalized and slain by illegal immigrants, the young cancer patient sworn in as an honorary Secret Service agent.

There’s no denying the daytime-television feel of the spectacle, but Podhoretz picked the wrong show. Trump’s speech was The Price Is Right — with us, the viewing public, cast as the contestants.

Behind Door #1: The future we were sleepwalking into until the most recent presidential election, defined by globalization and by the understanding of “freedom” and “prosperity” shared by Democrats, libertarians, and much of the Republican establishment.

Behind Door #2: Donald Trump’s alternative vision.

Liberty, or Libertine?

The first version of our future is an extension of our present and recent past. Globalization and technological progress make the goods we buy ever cheaper and our lives ever more convenient. But these same forces continue to erase the jobs that used to support a prosperous and respectable middle class. Americans seek happiness less and less in responsibilities and the strong connections that those responsibilities support — ties to work and family and community. More and more, we pursue happiness by expressing our individual desires, particularly our sexual desires.

We no longer understand freedom as the liberty to govern ourselves. Instead, we seek liberation from every constraint — from law and morality, and even from nature, including other people’s untutored observation that we are male or female. In short, we seek liberation from common sense.

And what is the second version of our future, the alternative that Trump is proposing? To understand it, consider Jeff Denard.

Denard was the most important of the guests the president spotlighted in Congress on Tuesday night because his story is the key to unlocking Trump’s understanding of what it means for America to be great again.

A Meaningful Life

Jeff Denard is an Alabama steelworker, who, in Trump’s words, “has been working at the same steel plant for 27 years in a job that has allowed him to serve as the captain of his local volunteer fire department, raise seven children with his beautiful wife, Nicole, and over the years provide a loving home for more than 40 foster children.”

The point of Denard’s story, in Trump’s telling, is that “tariffs are not just about protecting American jobs. They’re about protecting the soul of our country. Tariffs are about making America rich again and making America great again.”

The manufacturing job that Denard has held for a quarter century — when so many Americans have lost such jobs to “free trade” that too often seems to be rigged against American industry — has allowed him to have a life defined by commitments to work, to family, to his community. His life is meaningful and dignified because he has taken advantage of the opportunity to be a responsible human being.

There are many compelling economic arguments against tariffs. It’s a leap of faith to believe Trump when he promises, “There’ll be a little disturbance, but we’re okay with that. It won’t be much.” It’s an open question whether the proposed mix of tariffs, deregulation, energy production on steroids, and sheer animal spirits will work.

But there is one argument against tariffs that conservatives should not swallow.

Choose Your Price

It is an argument we are familiar with from a different context: Conservative critics of big government have long pointed out that the costs of out-of-control government spending are diffused among millions of taxpayers. The benefits, meanwhile, are concentrated on a small number of beneficiaries who are highly motivated to keep the gravy train running — more highly motivated than the taxpayers ever would be to cut off the funds. (DOGE may be changing the calculus on that issue.)

Now the same logic is being applied to tariffs. If we protect the steel industry, the concentrated benefit is that a few more Americans will have good manufacturing jobs, but the diffused cost is that all Americans will pay more for cars and appliances.

Well, good.

Imagine time traveling back a few decades to the 1980s to ask the American people, “Would you rather have cheaper appliances, clothes, toys, and food; more square feet of living space; more restaurant meals; and more frequent vacations to better destinations? Or what if, instead, by keeping on paying the higher percentage of your income that you are currently paying for these things, you could save America from a future of underemployment, family dysfunction, government assistance, drug abuse, and community disintegration? Would you be willing to pay a little more for everything so that your fellow citizens could live lives defined by good jobs, functional families, and satisfying volunteer work?”

The people of whom you asked that question would pick Door #2. The price is right.

Elizabeth Kantor is a freelance book editor and writing coach.