Trump’s Tariff Plan Is a Factory of Delusion
You’re a federal employee, maybe you process Medicare claims or audit billion-dollar partnerships for the IRS. One day, you get laid off. A week later, you’re handed a steel-toe boot and pointed toward a shuttered Ohio factory being “revived” by the Trump administration’s new tariff regime. Congratulations—you’ve been re-industrialized.
That’s the vision Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent sold in his recent interview with Tucker Carlson, now the official spokesperson for America’s parallel reality.
According to Bessent, the Trump administration will use federal layoffs and steep import taxes to both trim the “bloated” government and jumpstart a new era of blue-collar prosperity. This isn’t just an economic strategy. It’s an ideological fantasy built on the belief that you can simultaneously fire bureaucrats, wage trade war, and automate everything—and still revive American manufacturing like it’s 1952.
Spoiler alert: You can’t.
From Cubicles to Cogs
Let’s start with the mechanics.
Bessent says Trump’s team will eliminate “excess” federal labor and reroute those workers into private-sector manufacturing jobs newly created by tariffs. The idea reads like a MAGA-flavored New Deal—but with none of the planning and all of the punitive energy of a Hunger Games reboot.
It’s a cruel bait-and-switch. You’re not just unemployed. You’re “rebalanced.” Your job didn’t disappear. It was sacrificed for the higher purpose of “economic reordering.” And if you can’t make the leap from clerical work to assembling turbines? Don’t worry. AI and automation will make sure there aren’t too many jobs to fill in the first place.
Yes, really. The plan is to create manufacturing jobs and automate them out of existence simultaneously. Peak policy efficiency.
Tariffs Are Taxes (and Also Time Machines)
Let’s zoom out. Tariffs are taxes. They make imports more expensive, which companies pass on to consumers. That’s not a bug; it’s the whole point. The administration hopes this will make domestic production more attractive. But this isn’t the 20th century. U.S. factories don’t just spring back to life because steel from China is 40% more expensive. Modern supply chains are global, just-in-time, and interdependent. Slapping tariffs on them is like tossing a wrench into a Tesla and expecting it to become a Ford Model T.
Even the intended beneficiaries—manufacturers—are panicking. They know tariffs raise costs for their inputs too. That steel for your all-American washing machine? It might have come from Canada. Those components for a “Made in the USA” circuit board? Assembled in Malaysia. Protectionism is a blunt instrument in a world that runs on surgical precision.
Meanwhile, markets are tanking. Consumer and business confidence is cratering. And yet the administration continues to insist that these policies will somehow pay for tax cuts, revive industry, and fend off a looming economic crash that only they seem to see.
This isn’t economics. It’s performance art.
Laying Off the Lifeguards to Save the Swimmers
The administration is trying to fix a mythical problem with imaginary solutions. Bessent compared the current economy under Biden to a bodybuilder on steroids—ripped on the outside, dying on the inside. The analogy might work better flipped: Trump’s economy is the guy doing bicep curls while the gym is on fire. The building’s collapsing, but he’s flexing for Instagram.
More seriously: Bessent said laying off federal workers and imposing tariffs would “bring down federal borrowings.” Except, of course, those layoffs would trigger severance payouts, unemployment insurance claims, and a drop in federal income tax revenue—while tariffs jack up prices for everyday goods, further squeezing household budgets.
Also: tariffs might bring in some short-term cash, but the goal of tariffs is to eliminate the need for them. If they work, they stop being profitable. If they don’t, they hurt consumers and businesses. So, which is it?
Who Gets to Be “Labor”?
Beneath the economic contradictions is a deeper ideological move: redefining who counts as “real labor” and who deserves to suffer in the name of national renewal. Bureaucrats aren’t workers—they’re waste. Global trade isn’t progress—it’s betrayal. Manufacturing is sacred—even if no one wants the job, and automation makes it redundant.
It’s a perverse nostalgia. A yearning for a world where American men made things with their hands and didn’t have to answer to HR. It’s less about the economy and more about reclaiming a cultural identity that doesn’t actually exist anymore. And so we get economic policies that treat the 21st century like a glitch to be corrected.
The irony is that real revitalization does require bold investment in American industry—but in climate tech, semiconductor fabrication, advanced materials, and green energy. Not nostalgia cosplay with tariffs and pink slips.
The Factory of the Future Needs a Union Rep, Not a Treasury Hypeman
Bessent ended his remarks by comparing Trump’s economic policies to “reinforced cockpit doors” that could prevent financial catastrophe. That’s rich. Because right now, it feels like the pilot just locked the door, turned off the radio, and is flying straight into a tariff storm while assuring us that everything is under control.
But hey, at least you might get a job making the plane. Just don’t expect to fly it.
That’s the point.