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They're Everybody's Tariffs

The world is reeling and reacting to the tariff bombshells of the past week. Though White House messaging has been inconsistent in some ways, the motivation for turning the global economy upside down can be seen in some of the administration's talking points: America First, Economic Independence Day, and Liberation Day.



President Trump claims that other nations have been "ripping off" the US for years, and now it's time to retaliate. Despite the fact that, as Fareed Zakaria points out in this clip, the US runs a trade surplus in the area of services (which accounts for 86% of our current non-farm job market), Trump's 80s mindset continues to myopically hover around manufacturing, which accounts for only 8% of non-farm jobs. At this point in history, the most advanced industrial countries--including the US--are focused on in-demand services such as finance, healthcare, software development, and engineering, all of which on average pay more than their manufacturing counterparts.


According to Vice President J. D. Vance, the ultimate goal of the tariffs is to "stage the great American manufacturing comeback," but there are a number of problems with this goal. First, there is no guarantee that, if manufacturing jobs did come back to the US, they would locate in the depressed areas where they are needed most; in addition, many of those jobs are now done by machines instead of people. Second, building a plant and relocating a massive operation to it from somewhere else would require a huge investment of time and money. Third, many businesses may be reluctant to make that kind of investment if US trade policy varies greatly from one administration to the next. Business, after all, loves stability, not uncertainty.


There is another consideration to make about these matters, one that not many people are talking about at the moment. With so much focus on American workers, we are forgetting about all the other regular people that these tariffs will affect. The factory worker in Asia, the small co-op farmer in Africa, the mid-sized corporate employee in Europe--all of these people will be affected by the President's desire to inflict his economic retribution. As half the global population lives on less than $7.00/day and 8% lives on less than $3.00/day, the affect of these tariffs could be devastating on communities that are already in economic straits.



In thinking about all of these factors, how do people of faith need to assess the current situation? I would like to pan out for a moment and think about everyone involved in the global economic picture. Though the conversation is focused on countries, every country is ultimately made up of many individuals, all of whom depend on their current jobs to feed their families and pay their bills.


The following section was written from comments made by Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, on July 26, 2017. It is reposted with permission from the author, Geoff Knott, in a post entitled "Everybody's Business" from the Word on the Streets. In it, we find a very different perspective than the one currently offered by the administration.


How do we as Christians approach the whole business of economic development? First thing to say is that one of the things the New Testament does is put before us not a series of rules, but a picture of a working society. The working society is called the body of Christ. That's to say, the community in which everybody's welfare and everybody else's welfare are inseparable. This really is the rising tide that lifts all things, but it's more than that. It's a community in which you have to understand that there are all sorts of things that are only good when you do them together.


We have to think of those activities that we're all involved in, which are only good when you do them together. So if you're playing in a band or in a sports team, then what's good for you is good for everybody when it's working well.  In other words, if you're singing in a choir or playing in a band, the one thing you don't want is somebody in the audience to say, "I could really hear that one." It doesn't make you very popular with your colleagues either. The point is, you do it together. It's good when it's done together, and you are made to perform well by the excellent performance of your neighbor. 


Now, think about that as a model for human society because it seems to me that that is what is put before us in the basic documents of the Christian faith. "God has put the body together such that extra honor and care are given to those parts that have less dignity. This makes for harmony among the members, so that all the members care for each other. If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it, and if one part is honored, all the parts are glad." says Paul. 


So, that's one of our stopping points. We have a picture of society working well, which entails that sense of things that are good that can only be done together. And while we accept that that works with bands, football teams, choirs, or whatever, we don't all that easily accept that all that works for national or international economies, but it's time we did because our vastly expanding world is also a rapidly shrinking world. So the challenges and the problems of every locality and every person become everybody's business. 


Secondly, when we recognize that we're in a community where, at least potentially, the wellbeing of each and the wellbeing of all can coincide, we realize something about the dignity of the neighbor. The neighbor is the person that has something to give, as I am someone who can give to the neighbor. Mutuality and dignity follow from that idea of everybody supporting everybody else in the community. Mutuality and dignity imply that you don't go in with ready-made solutions to other people's situations. You are willing to learn, to walk at the pace of your neighbor and your collaborator, understand the way they understand, to see from their perspective, and that's something to do with their dignity.


This is also linked to sustainability. How do you build something that goes on with its own momentum, its own energy, not dependence? When you do it by building up dignity in practical ways, and bound in with all that, is Christian love. Love is certainly not just a sentimental word or feeling from me toward somebody else; love is also an awed astonishment at what's going on in my neighbor, a recognition and respect and patience and generosity for what this gift-giving other might just be for me. Love is to do with all that as well. To love someone without respecting them, or think we love someone without respecting them, is a very bad idea indeed. We can't really do it, and one of the things I think we as Christians have to bear in mind is that, strange as it may seem, God respects the world He's made, and that God's love for us is a love which accepts offering our perspective, however ridiculously distorted, selfish, and muddled it is. So, respect, love, recognition of dignity is all bound up in this task.


Thirdly, I want to draw out a concept that has to do with hurt - humility. And humility, I think, is about realism, recognizing what I can and can't do, recognizing that I can't do everything and need the other, recognizing that I can do what I can do, and that it's extremely important for me to learn what that is. So, as has often been said, if you can't make all the difference, then what's the difference you can make? None of us can make all the difference. We better not try, but the task is discerning the difference we can make and working from there out of it. That does imply, again, mutuality and dignity, the listening, the respect for all those who are around us. "I can't change everything" can be an allegory that allows us to say, "then I better not bother," or it can be, "I can't change everything, so I'd better find the people who can change the things that I can't change," and work with the grain for all that.


We've perhaps been suspicious of the world of business as selfish and worldly. I think we've grown up a little bit, and one of the things we tried to do is to recognize that it is extremely important for long-term development that we build capacity. That requires empowering and releasing. Release what's blocked - motivation, circumstances, resources, etc. We look for helping people step forward into taking responsibility. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said that the Christian's responsibility is to be responsible for other people becoming responsible. I like that.


That raises the question, not only of what business does and what it can achieve, but how business does it. How a business works, how it regards human beings, how it works within itself. Not just what it does, but how it does it. Not just what it's doing for external people, but what it's doing for the people within it. Is a business enterprise itself a nurturing, humane, just enterprise?


Getting back to community, there is a still a memory of church as a integral part.  Not supposed to be there for its own profit, but for everybody's wellbeing. There for the long term and isn't going to be put off or exiled, as it were, by disappointing short-term returns. Having grassroots reach. It can be the most wonderful place. When it works, my goodness, it works. It lights a fuse and there's an explosion of energy - transforming energy. 


Communities taking a step forward towards a vision of the good things we can only do when we're doing them together, whether we're talking about enterprise, business, education or about the rehabilitation of people who have been outcasts and victims, etc. That's what we have to keep in mind as an unchanging framework, moving towards that kind of community where the good of each and the good of all coincide, where we're all singing in the same choir or playing in the same band. 


The question, then, goes back to the White House talking points. As the wealthiest country in the world, is "America First" the message that we really need to be focused on, since we are already there? I am not denying that there are many struggling people in the US, far from it. We need to help those who have been left behind by decades of trickle-down economic policies (see our post on this topic). I believe, however, that the answer to helping these people involves protection, not protectionism, as this article in The Atlantic points out.


In addition, we also need to ask if there really is such a thing as economic independence at this point. If, as the phrase implies, we want to be "liberated" from other nations, it would essentially mean that the US would trade only within its own borders. As this scenario is neither possible nor realistic, the only alternative is that we trade with other countries. If we trade with other countries, the way forward towards prosperity (as history has shown) is not to isolate or be the bully on the block, but to work cooperatively toward mutual economic benefit.



Working together not only makes economic sense, it also aligns with our faith values. This view does not advocate being a doormat. To the contrary, if there is a problem or an inequity, it can and should be worked out (also a Biblical principle), as this solution contributes to long-term stability and prosperity as well.


In the end, pretending that we can consider the welfare of the US alone, or that doing so will help the country in the long run, is delusional. Our symbiotic, global world is here to stay, and to recklessly toy with its delicate economic balance will ultimately bring hardship, not prosperity, to everyone.


Fix Capitalism. Fix the American Dream.
Fix Capitalism. Fix the American Dream.



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"This book merits close, sustained attention as a compelling move beyond both careless thinking and easy ideology."—Walter Brueggemann, Columbia Theological Seminary


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