The Tariff Dilemma

US President Donald Trump imposed reciprocal tariffs on many countries, as he promised during his campaign. He argues these duties are long past due and will help the US to reindustrialize and reshore supply chains critical to national security. Furthermore, his main selling point is that tariffs will help American workers, who have been devastated by decades of free trade agreements which moved production abroad to places like Mexico and East Asia. It should come as little surprise that the United Auto Workers (UAW) union endorsed the move. 

Are tariffs really in the interest of workers? Or does this mask the real intention, which is national security, automation and corporate greed? 

I believe it is the latter. First, there is no such thing as an American corporation. Ford and General Motors, for example, keep headquarters in the US and are seen as quintessential American companies and key parts of the Arsenal of Democracy that was instrumental in the Allies winning World War II. Yet these same corporations have operations across the globe and could not have shifted production away from the USA quickly enough in order to find cheap labor and undercut workers at home.

Like every other corporation, auto companies are using AI and other emerging technologies to replace, surveil and speedup labor in every way imaginable. Machine learning allows for an algorithmic modelling of collective knowledge, which records individual behaviors, community life, and even cultural heritage at scale. Thus, the same people making the argument that tariffs will benefit workers are usually the same people complaining that AI is going to take everybody’s jobs. Go figure. 

In the 1980s, many auto workers engaged in “Buy American” campaigns, smashing Toyotas with sledgehammers and intimidating anybody who dared drive a car made outside of the US. Critics at the time noted that many Toyotas actually have more parts made in the US than Ford’s or Chevy’s. Therefore, workers allying with Ford, GM and Chrysler against Japanese workers and auto corporations made little sense. 

Instead, many labor theorists argued that since capital is international, labor must also be international. Ford, for example, gives not one iota where a car is produced as long as it aids profit margins. They shift production back and forth between various countries in order to whipsaw and outmaneuver labor unions. Thus, the only effective resistance lay in organizing internationally with workers in say Japan, Mexico, China, Canada, Vietnam, England, Germany and so forth, in order to combat increasingly mobile capital. If workers in the US go on strike, but keep working in Britain and Vietnam, then the corporation will just move production there.

It is impossible to get inside Donald Trump or Howard Lutnick’s head and understand what this move is really about. But helping workers? Give me a break. Many of these high-tech plants will require little human capital, and most of the jobs will be so advanced they may have to be filled by H1-B visa holders, which the Trump administration and its backers in Silicon Valley have embraced. 3D printing and AI will allow for customizable manufacturing in Chicago, as opposed to the Philippines, fundamentally reshaping global supply chains. Bringing chip production back from Taiwan is a safe bet given the threat of a Chinese invasion. Apple and Google will probably pour billions of more dollars into the US. 

When Chinese statesman Chou Enlai was asked in 1970 what he thought of the French Revolution, which occurred in 1789, he said it is “too soon to tell.” In 2025, commentators are looking for a scoop on higher prices or laid off workers the day after, as if such developments are indicative of anything significant. Why not give it a week, if not a month? Smartphones are ruining everything.

Yet many are finally beginning to realize that, unless they are a wealthy tech entrepreneur or financier, this has nothing to do with them. The reason is because everything they can do, somebody else can do better and cheaper. For American workers, that somebody used to be a person toiling away in a Chinese sweatshop. In the near future if not already, it will be a robot. Not only will the rich get richer, but they will have manufactured consent amongst workers for their own obsolescence. Brilliant.