The Beautiful Lie

How Trump’s Tariffs Shift the Tax Burden, Enable Billionaire Tax Cuts, and Threaten to Do It All Over Again

Tariffs are another classic Trump con.

They’re not paid by other countries—they’re paid by American consumers. Trump knows this. That’s why he calls them “beautiful.” But beautiful for whom?

Not for the working families now paying more for food, fuel, cars, clothes, and building materials. Not for the farmers bankrupted by retaliatory trade bans. And certainly not for the American middle class, already straining under a shredded safety net.

Tariffs are beautiful for billionaires. Not because they make trade fairer or America stronger, but because they do something far more useful to those at the top: they shift the tax burden away from wealth and onto wages, away from capital and onto consumption. In the eyes of the ultra-rich—who already see themselves as carrying the load, since the bottom half of Americans contribute less than 10 percent of total federal taxes—tariffs are a way to rebalance the system in their favor without ever having to say so.

That was the real logic behind Trump’s embrace of tariffs in 2017. The tax cuts he pushed through that year—slashing corporate rates, expanding loopholes for pass-through income, and gutting the estate tax—blew a massive hole in the federal budget. Filling that hole with taxes on the rich was never an option in his world. Instead, he reached for something more subtle: a hidden tax on everyone else.

Tariffs don’t show up on a tax return. You don’t file paperwork to pay them. You pay them at the register, every time you shop. They raise the cost of imported goods—washing machines, groceries, auto parts—and like sales taxes, they fall hardest on those with the least flexibility in their budgets. In economic terms, they’re regressive. In human terms, they’re punishing.

Trump sells tariffs as a way to bring manufacturing back home—to “restore” American greatness and rebuild blue-collar jobs. But the factories that once employed millions now run on automation and robotics. The jobs haven’t just moved overseas; many have vanished altogether. And the ones that remain follow the logic of global capitalism: lower labor costs, fewer regulations, and proximity to fast-growing markets. Unless American workers accept drastically lower wages—an economic race to the bottom—tariffs alone won’t reverse this trend. Instead, they just make goods more expensive, cut into household budgets, and shrink demand. What gets “brought back” isn’t industry. It’s illusion.

By the peak of Trump’s 2017 trade war, the average American household was paying roughly $830 more each year—an invisible tax buried in everyday costs. That’s not abstract. That’s food on the table, prescriptions filled, rent paid late or not at all. And all the while, the wealthy kept their windfall. Their portfolios grew. Their companies consolidated. And the basic principle of progressive taxation—that those who have more should contribute more—was quietly inverted.

This isn’t new. There’s a long history of powerful leaders framing economic pain as patriotic duty. In empire after empire, the burden was passed down the ladder and wrapped in stories that made it feel necessary—divinely ordained, economically wise, or a sacrifice for the homeland. Tariffs work the same way. They didn’t just raise prices; they sold the illusion that pain was proof of purpose. That struggling to buy groceries meant you were doing your part for America. That “we” were winning—even as most Americans were losing ground. It’s the oldest trick in the book: mask extraction as protection, and call it loyalty.

Now, in 2025, Trump wants to do it again—but at a scale that dwarfs the first round. A universal 10 percent tariff on all imports, with a 60 percent surcharge on goods from China, isn’t a strategy. It’s a battering ram aimed at the global economy—and at American consumers.

And this time, the consequences are landing early and hard.

Markets are plummeting. Trillions in value have already vanished. Investment is drying up, especially in sectors dependent on international supply chains. Companies are folding or cutting jobs to stay solvent. Farmers, manufacturers, and retailers are all warning that the next wave won’t just hurt—it will collapse them.

Trade deals haven’t followed. Negotiations have stalled or broken down entirely. Retaliation is already underway. And the inflation that was beginning to ease has been reignited—this time with no clear off-ramp.

Economists no longer speak of risk. They speak of inevitability. A recession, once a distant possibility, now seems all but guaranteed. Some are warning of something worse—stagflation, widespread job loss, a financial chain reaction that could ripple globally.

And yet, for all that, there’s a glimmer of something else: erosion. The cracks are showing. Trump’s support is bleeding, not just among moderates but in the same working- and middle-class communities he once claimed to champion. Business leaders are backing away. Allies are hedging. Even his inner circle is fracturing under the weight of consequence.

Because what he promised was dominance. What he delivered was damage.

Tariffs were never just about trade. They were about power—about rearranging who pays and who escapes. They financed tax cuts for the wealthy, offloaded the cost onto the rest of us, and wrapped the whole thing in the language of nationalism. Now, with the 2025 plan already unraveling, we’re watching the cost come due.

So when Trump says tariffs are beautiful, believe him. Not because they work—but because they let him keep the con alive. They shift the burden, deepen inequality, and sell it all as strength. They didn’t just finance tax cuts for the rich. They reframed sacrifice as patriotism and suffering as proof of national loyalty.

But here’s the thing about myths: they crack when they stop making sense.

And that’s where we are now.

The illusion is breaking. People are waking up to the truth behind the slogans. They see the shelves are bare, the prices are up, and the jobs are vanishing—not because of some foreign enemy, but because of a policy that was always designed to protect wealth, not workers.

Anthropologists know that when the story breaks, people begin to remember what was lost—and what they’re owed. That’s when the ground shifts. That’s when people start asking different questions: Who benefits? Who pays? Who decides?

The real fight isn’t just over tariffs or taxes. It’s over the right to name what’s happening. To reject the myth that says your pain is patriotic, your sacrifice noble, and your struggle inevitable. To refuse the lie that says there is no alternative.

Because there is. There always is.

And maybe the first step is seeing the “beautiful lie” for what it really is—a mask. And deciding not to wear it anymore.

Suggested Readings (Chicago Style, alphabetized)

Klein, Naomi. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2007.

Piketty, Thomas. Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014.

Polanyi, Karl. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. Boston: Beacon Press, 2001.

Stiglitz, Joseph E. The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future. New York: W. W. Norton, 2012.

Tilly, Charles. Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990–1992. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992.