Koch Network Admits They Failed to Stop Trump’s Tariffs: ‘We Were Wrong’

The donor-class Koch network headed by GOP mega-donor Charles Koch is now admitting they failed to turn the American people against President Trump’s tariffs on Chinese imports.

In June 2018, the Koch network of organizations — which include Americans for Prosperity, Freedom Partners, and the Libre Initiative — launched a campaign against Trump’s economic nationalist policies that have helped weaken China’s economy and brought the U.S. steel industry roaring back, mostly by imposing tariffs on various foreign imports.

The goal of the Koch network’s campaign was to champion free trade at all costs by claiming tariffs are increasing prices on consumers. The campaign, though, has been such a failure that the Koch network is halting the effort.

Officials with the Koch network told CNBC that they will release new ads attacking the Trump administration’s economic nationalist agenda, but that they do not yet know what the message for those ads will be.

Let's struggle for some perspective.

Tariffs have the effect of favoring one class in society at the cost of a different class in society. In other words, government is putting its finger on the scales to favor one constituency at the cost of a different constituency. The Koch brothers lobbied on behalf of one constituency that had been favored for decades but which now they believe is being disfavored.

The degree to which tariffs cost some sectors, such as consumers, is mitigated to the extent that the targeted country, in this case China, devalues its currency which China has done. Further, if domestic producers of consumer goods do not raise their prices to the level imposed by tariffs on foreign importers, the impact on consumers is also mitigated.

Some consumers, most adults in fact, are job seekers or job holders and to the extent that their quest for work is satisfied because domestic producers need more labor to fill increased demand, the cost to the consuming class is further mitigated. To the extent that domestic producers pass along increase profits enabled by tariffs to employees as increased wages, the cost to consumers is also mitigated.

Some industries have been virtually extinguished by the trade policy favored by the Koch brothers, to the extent that those industries are revived and enter into domestic production, their employees, who are also consumers, are favored with new jobs and the harm to consumers is mitigated.

Meanwhile, the class of Koch Brothers employees and stockholders are disfavored. In reversing course, the government favors one class and disfavors another. Was the reverse of course prudent?

At some point the old system favored by the brothers had brought America to an inflection point, in which the consumer class as an employee class had been disadvantaged to a point that became dangerous for the whole economic system. Trump looked at the Chinese mercantilist model and saw an existential threat and has acted to reverse the hollowing out process resulting from acquiescence to Chinese mercantilism.

More than an equation between consumer and job holder, Chinese mercantilism posed a great threat to everyone by its bid to dominate the New Wave changing the world as potently as the Industrial Revolution, a wave which is now breaking upon us-technology. Not only was our industrial sector being hollowed out but grave threat to the all-important technology sector was made apparent. At this point government, or society if you prefer, whether wittingly or not made a decision to prevail in this technology war when we elected Donald Trump. To acknowledge this war puts the tariff question at a whole new dimension beyond what's good for this class or that, it makes war for the survival of the nation not just as an economic entity but as a sovereign entity.

To a conservative, survival of the nation equates with survival of liberty.

Excellent summary about these anti America elite thugs:

These globalist pricks have no problem at all with other nations imposing massive tariffs on American goods. But when Trump imposes reciprocal tariffs to even the trade playing field, the Kochs and their ilk cry socialism. ...another ludicrous charge. Protectionism isn’t socialism. Tariffs were by far the largest source of federal revenue until the Federal income tax began right before WW1. Our Founders were all protectionists to varying degrees. Globalists (mostly of the fake conservative variety) have succeeded in the last few decades in turning protectionism and tariffs into dirty words.

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