Trump’s Tariff Gamble
Rolling the revenue dice: Donald Trump’s announcement of sweeping tariffs cemented the president’s campaign goal to raise taxes on imports. But the move is bigger than that, writes the Hudson Institute's Mike Watson—it’s part of Trump’s plan to "reconfigure the American relationship with the administrative state."
Trump views the government as not merely bloated and inefficient, but a major impediment to American flourishing. It’s not just regulations that are a problem. The tax code is fiendishly complex and encourages all sorts of perverse behaviors.
Trump’s solution for these problems has three stages. First, unleash Elon Musk and his whiz kids at DOGE. As Musk recently told Fox News’s Bret Baier, his goal is to cut $1 trillion from the federal budget, which currently stands close to $7 trillion, "without affecting any of the critical government services." Then, generate new revenue with tariffs. According to Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro, the government should get about $700 billion annually from taxes on imports.
If all goes according to plan, there will be $1.7 trillion annually of cuts and new funding that can be used to accomplish other administration goals, such as zeroing out taxes on people making less than $150,000. At the end of this process, there should be less federal spending, fewer bureaucrats to create new regulations, fewer distortions in the tax code, and more incentives for businesses to move their manufacturing facilities to the United States.
But plenty could go wrong. DOGE may not hit its goal. The tariffs—already a political gamble—could fail. Manufacturers could fear a trade war too much to invest in new factories. Allies could turn to China. Trump is staying positive, saying of "Liberation Day": "It's going to be a day that hopefully you're going to look back in years to come and you're going to say, you know, he was right." Hopefully.
READ MORE: The Rocky Road to Liberation
Told you so: When Brown sophomore Alex Shieh published an online database last month spotlighting "legally questionable" DEI programs at the Ivy League school, he became the target of both a university investigation and a hacking campaign that shut down his site. On Thursday, the Trump administration revoked more than $500 million in Brown funds due in part to the very programs Shieh advised Brown to ditch—but he's not done with his efforts to destroy DEI.
Shieh's "Bloat@Brown" database, which has attracted the attention of DOGE leader Elon Musk and Ivy League critic Bill Ackman, went back online Friday morning for the first time since the hacking. Visitors were greeted with a new header reading, "Meet the DEI bureaucrats who lost Brown University $510 million in federal funds." Included on the homepage were the names of "49 Brown University employees" Shieh flagged for "potentially holding illegal DEI roles," including "Associate Dean for Undergraduate Research and Inclusive Science" and "Associate Vice President for Institutional Equity, Accessibility and Compliance."
The database was Shieh's first project under the banner of the Brown Spectator, a conservative campus paper that had been dormant for 11 years. Shieh told us he plans to relaunch the paper in the coming weeks and expand "Bloat@Brown" to other Ivies.
"I guess my passion is dismantling DEI," he said, "because that really hurts Asian students." Godspeed.
Where have we heard that before: Days before her resignation, former Columbia president Katrina Armstrong made public assurances—notwithstanding her private remarks to the contrary—that she was committed to implementing a series of Trump-imposed policy reforms. Her successor, Claire Shipman, issued a statement of her own on Friday about those changes.
"First, the commitments the University made to address antisemitism, harassment, and discrimination … are now my commitments, and work is underway to continue their implementation," she wrote. "I believe the plans, many of which were already underway, are the right thing to do, and good for our institution."
Shipman's remarks did not address the doublespeak and inconsistent enforcement that defined Armstrong's final days in office and threatened to derail Columbia's long-term negotiations with the Trump administration. We'll see if her federal regulators find her convincing.
READ MORE: New Columbia President Promises To ‘Continue’ Implementing Trump-Imposed Reforms
Away from the Beacon:
- Bye bye: Trump posted a video of a group of Houthi terrorists gathered "for instructions on an attack." Then they went boom. "Oops, there will be no attack by these Houthis!"
- Bad news for Randi Weingarten: The Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration can move forward with its planned spending cuts at the Department of Education.
- Speaking of the High Court, it's enjoying its highest approval rating since 2022, with 54 percent of Americans giving a thumbs up to its job performance, according to a Marquette Law School poll.
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