by Emil Guillermo
You live in Hawaii. You’re used to higher costs. But the Trump tariffs are going to hit us all where it matters most.
You don’t expect sticker shock at your local Philippine grocery store.
But I know I’ve wondered about the price of imported macapuno (coconut sport) or ube (purple yam) at five or six bucks a jar.
Would you stop buying imported authenticity if it went to eight to ten bucks a jar for a Philippine brand? It’s cheaper to just go home to make root beer floats, with vegan non-dairy ice cream, of course.
This is the reality of Trump’s tariffs on Filipinos and other Asian Americans.
And maybe you saw it while shopping this weekend. It’s going to take a toll on the Asianness in all our lives.
But here’s where tariffs are really “tarrifying.”
At this point, nobody knows whether they’ll be permanent or if they’re just part of Trump’s bullying style of negotiation to get countries to kiss the ring.
We do know this. There will be pain. Trump won’t feel it. But we will.
Simply put, tariffs are a $50 dollar word for tax—a sales tax. You already pay a 4% sales tax in Hawaii. Ready for more?
If you buy imported goods (from food to clothing to electronics), a tariff will be part of the final cost you pay. And the cost will be built-in and be higher.
Trump has announced tariffs on nearly 200 countries that begin with a base of 10% on all imports, with reciprocal tariffs on the worst examples.
China is getting a reciprocal tariff of 34%, but like in a poker game, China has said it will put on another 34% on the U.S. Trump has responded by saying he’ll raise his tariff by another 50%.
Lunacy or the art of the deal? I say more loony than art.
It’s hard to be precise about the cost to you in the end because tariffs are placed on a country, but the country doesn’t pay—the manufacturing company does.
And then it’s up to that company to eat the tariff or slip it onto you. Corporate self-interest being what it is, I’d say it’s all on you.
Sales taxes are the worst because they’re regressive, meaning everyone pays the same, rich and poor. Sounds fair, but an extra 2-2.5% price hike means nothing to a billionaire.
It’s more meaningful to the average family of four.
The Yale Economics Lab puts the cost of tariffs to that typical family at $3,800 a year.
The impact will be in almost everything you buy. Expensive sneakers will be even more expensive. Nike, which has manufacturing in Asia, could choose to focus on Asian markets if tariffs make their products too expensive for American consumers.
Another example: phones. One stock market analyst said Apple’s iPhones, which are already around $1,000 retail, could see prices go as high as $3,000.
And all this on the whim of one man hell bent on a trade war.
Trump Golfs While The World Burns
In the meantime, in a time of world crisis, Trump showed how much he cares about us all.
In a move that is akin to Nero fiddling while Rome burns, Trump went golfing.
Is this any way a world leader acts? Of course not.
But this is the real issue Americans must grapple with.
America is no longer the leader of the world’s global economy. Nor of… anything. Not anymore. That’s Trump’s desire. He said this week his image of America’s Golden Age is between 1873-1913.
Think of that. America was in post-reconstruction mode, America had no sense of civil rights, and the U.S. colonized the Philippines.
That’s more than 100 years. Trump is taking us back, not just chronologically but socially and economically as well.
And he’s flashing the era’s economic tool of choice, tariffs, which unfortunately also helped cause the Great Depression.
Do you see why at least a dozen Nobel Laureates in Economics disagree with Trump on trade? In the 21st Century, Trump acts like he’s in the 19th Century.
And he’s using bad math. Economists are condemning Trump’s equation used to derive trade imbalances with other countries. They don’t make sense. But his fake numbers justify him to call an emergency to wage tariffs.
He needs the emergency to sidestep Congress. But for how long?
At least four current Republican members of Congress are now challenging the president’s overreach of power.
Only Congress can impose taxes, but declaring an emergency has enabled Trump to levy what former VP Mike Pence has called “the largest peacetime tax hike in U.S. history.”
It’s bad, but even if Trump were to undo the tariffs, the damage is already done.
The world now sees the US not as smart nor as a trustworthy partner. And the suspicion goes beyond Trump and extends to the uninvolved, low-interest voters in America who put him back in office.
The wrongheaded global trade war has our closest allies wondering, WTF?
We’re No Longer Number 1
In the case of Canada, Trump imposed a 25% tariff on our closest ally, and Canada reciprocated with its tariffs on American cars.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney spoke the blunt truth about America’s place in the world.
“The system of global trade anchored on the United States that Canada has relied on since the end of the Second World War, a system that, while not perfect, has helped to deliver prosperity for our country for decades is over,” Carney said the day after the tariff announcements.
“Our old relationship of steadily integrating with the United States is over. The 80-year period when the United States embraced the mantle of global economic leadership, when it forged alliances rooted in trust and mutual respect and championed the free and open exchange of goods and services is over. While this is a tragedy, it is also the new reality.”
That’s from an ally.
The upshot: America is no longer the leader of the free world.
It’s a country run by a man who has started a wrongheaded trade war with the world and let everyone see his true ambition for America. To go backward, not forward.
Under Trump, the US no longer wants to be number 1. Trump’s USA wants to be isolated, alone, alienating all our former friends, and making everyone pay to kiss the ring.
In the meantime, the cost of everything goes up domestically for Americans.
If you’re one of those low-interest voters who voted for Trump because he was a businessman and promised to fix the economy, time to re-assess.
Trump is destroying the economy with higher prices, higher inflation and a precarious job situation to come. All that, plus a volatile stock market that lost more than $11 trillion in Trump’s first 11 eleven weeks.
We do know the disapproval rating on Trump’s tariffs are as high as 58%, according to one Wall Street Journal poll.
The recent “Hands Off” protests across the country show there are hundreds of thousands of people willing to take to the streets and push back against Trump.
If tariffs ignited the beginning of a “People Power” in America, that would be something.
EMIL GUILLERMO is an award-winning journalist and commentator. See his micro-talk show on YouTube.com/@emilamok. Contact him at emilamok@gmail.com.
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