Trump's Tariffs and the Conservative Death Drive

Note: I was working on a newsletter about Trump’s calls for a third term when Liberation Day hit, and I paused to gather my thoughts. That piece is still coming, but first things first.

Trump’s barrage of new tariffs have fundamentally altered the discourse around his presidency in a way that, at least in America, only money really can.

The gutting of the federal civil service and even the disappearance of legal residents by masked thugs are somehow less visceral to the median American than the line going down and prices going up. Most of Trump’s big initiatives to this point have been designed very consciously to either target politically marginalized groups, like his anti-trans and anti-immigrant policies, or do damage that’s difficult to trace, like his hollowing out of federal agencies. But now he has messed with the money, and America has snapped to attention.

We’ve seen a negative reaction across most of the political spectrum. After all, many people voted for Trump because, due to certain defects of human psychology, they associated him with economic stability and prosperity. And even if you’re a fan of aggressive protectionism, the administration displayed the sort of incompetence that’s hard to defend. They used a tariff formula that everyone agrees is incoherent, and they levied tariffs on an island inhabited entirely by penguins. Everyone from reactionary dullards like Dave Portnoy to business creeps like Bill Ackman and partisans like Ben Shapiro have expressed their distaste.

But there is still, as always, a loyal set of Trump supporters who haven’t wavered. What’s more interesting is that for the most part those people aren’t arguing that the tariffs won’t be painful for Americans. Instead, they’re arguing that pain is good – that our society must suffer in order to ultimately prevail.

Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner compared the tariffs to a war effort, requiring sacrifice from the public. Trump himself said that we have to “take [our] medicine.” Elon Musk, though seemingly skeptical of the tariffs, has suggested that the administration would cause a period of economic tumult before things stabilized. I’ve seen the same basic sentiment paraded all across MAGA social media: it will hurt, but it’s for the greater good.

I wouldn’t be the first person to point out that this is rich coming from people who had full-throated meltdowns when asked to wear masks and keep a polite distance in public during a pandemic. As usual, the hypocrisy is so clear that it’s almost boring; if Joe Biden were to impose these tariffs, these same folks would be openly plotting various types of sedition.

But there’s a measure by which their position is actually somewhat consistent. It’s not that they believe in self-sacrifice – they believe in suffering. More specifically, they believe that human suffering can have a purifying effect: it tests our resolve and we emerge stronger for it. This allows them to think both that market-crushing tariffs are beneficial and that mask mandates – an attempt to lift the crushing weight of the pandemic off of us – are a counterproductive imposition.

Edmund Burke, modern conservatism’s founding father, wrote about the clarifying effects of what he called the “sublime” – the experience of suffering and terror. It is, to hear him tell it, both horrible and invigorating. It compels us into a heightened state of being.

You can see Burke’s idea mirrored, albeit in a dumber fashion, in modern right-wing memes. A very popular one – shared by Elon Musk and others – says that “hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, weak men create hard times.” The suffering is both an inevitable and necessary part of the cycle. It brings with it the prospect that a stronger, more resilient society will be forged.

Corey Robin, in his book The Reactionary Mind, recounted that in the period between the fall of the Soviet Union and 9/11, many conservatives bemoaned what they felt was a political and cultural malaise. A decade without national conflict had left us purposeless and weak. 9/11, tragic as it was, shook us into a more meaningful place.

The right clamors for turmoil. Some of their most inscrutable characteristics become legible once you see it. Why would they believe that transgender people are a threat to the social fabric? Why would they crater the economy based on some half-imagined trade war? Because conflict itself is the goal, to the point where if necessary they will create it from thin air.

The delusion these reactionaries all share is that they would emerge from these trials triumphant, dripping in valor and glory. But we’ve already seen them cower in the face of even minor inconvenience, and this will be no different. If the tariffs remain in their current form, the people advocating for them now will beg for a reprieve. If it ever comes, they will learn all the wrong lessons and blame all the wrong people. Things will stabilize. But over time they will get restless, longing again for strife, and if it’s not brought to them they will bring it to us.