Former President Donald Trump's economic agenda, particularly his proposal to replace income taxes with massive tariffs on foreign goods, has been widely criticized by economists as deeply inflationary and a tax cut for the rich. But it's worse than that, wrote Peter Coy for The New York Times — his plans are about taking the federal government down an authoritarian path.
At the debate on Tuesday, wrote Coy, Trump added "fresh details to an economic agenda that would concentrate more power in the hands of the president."
In doing so, Trump put "more distance between himself and traditional small-government Republicanism," Coy wrote.
"Trump’s authoritarian tendencies on matters such as threatening to jail political opponents and to expel millions of undocumented immigrants in a 'bloody story' have been clear for a long time. What’s emerging is an economic agenda that’s increasingly similar in tone and ambition. It begins to approach what some scholars call authoritarian capitalism," said Coy.
The key point to note, he continued, is that unlike most economic policies that need Congressional approval, the president can enact tariffs more or less unilaterally. So switching to a system that relies on them for most of the government's revenue would serve to make the president the primary decider on tax policy.
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Other presidents, including President Joe Biden, have employed tariffs as well — but the difference, wrote Coy, is he did it in retaliation for other countries' unfair trade practices, while Trump imposed tariffs with reckless abandon on allies.
Some Trump supporters believe stronger command over the economy would fix America's problems, wrote Coy, but elsewhere in the world, authoritarians' economic plans are stumbling.
"In China, President Xi Jinping has stoked inefficient state-owned enterprises while throttling the more innovative private sector, which is less under his control. Under President Vladimir Putin, Russia’s economy has become a Potemkin village: prosperous in the show cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg but impoverished in the hinterlands."
Meanwhile, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan let inflation skyrocket, and Viktor Orban, the strongman Hungarian prime minister, has presided over the E.U.'s most corrupt state.
The message is clear, he warned.
"If Trump wins in November, his political opponents will be at risk," said Coy. "So will the U.S. economy."
