From Heritage Foundation’s EJ Antoni, “Trump’s tariff critics are trading on overblown and unfounded fears”:

The market analysts and so-called economists panicking over President Donald Trump’s tariffs must be at least somewhat relieved that he’s agreed to pause the ones he wants to impose on Mexico.

But they shouldn’t have been worried in the first place, because their fears are misplaced. Trump understands the harsh reality of the situation: other nations have exploited the U.S. for decades, and it’s long past time America fought back. In fact, Trump’s actions will benefit Americans greatly.

In the first place, the idea that tariffs are always and everywhere passed on to consumers is a fallacy, by both economic theory and the record of history. Factors such as changes in exchange rates mean that foreign producers typically end up paying some (or most) of a tariff.

I thought for a moment I was reading Samir Amin’s Unequal Exchange .  I’m not sure I understand how other countries have exploited us* — unless he means that by subsidizing production (thereby reducing the price to US consumers) they have been exploiting us (This logic works if (i) the weight placed on producers is higher than that on consumers in cost-benefit analysis, or (ii) there are externalities in exporting). Or maybe he’s talking about using the labor theory of value (a pillar of Marxian economics).

Another point: Nobody says that the entire weight of the tariff falls on the importer. This depends on tariff pass through which in turn depends on whether a large country or small country assumption is appropriate. In the case of the Trump 1.0 tariffs, most of the tax incidence was on (United States) importers.

EJ Antoni continues:

America’s long-standing deficit has been funded by the Federal Reserve, which has effectively been printing money and sending it around the world to finance our elephantine trade deficits for decades. This process has devalued the dollar over the years, so that Americans’ money doesn’t go as far as it used to—a phenomenon we call inflation.

The Fed’s money base as of end-Q3 is $4.7 trn, Federal debt held by the public was $28.3 trn. I thought that printing money meant that the budget deficit equaled the change in money base…

* I would put exploitation of forced labor, e.g. Uyghurs, as an instance of possible exploitation of US labor.