Are we liberated yet? 

President Donald Trump’s “liberation day” rollout of supposedly reciprocal tariffs will not age well for America or the Republican Party — least of all for those of us here in Nevada. 

In fact, the pain from those tariffs is already being felt locally. Even beyond the billions of dollars’ worth of goods from Canada, Mexico and elsewhere that will be directly affected, we’re already seeing that a trade war isn’t exactly stellar for promoting tourism. 

Given how heavily Nevada’s economy depends on cash-flush tourists from across the globe, that’s a trend that doesn’t bode well for our short term — or long term — economic health. 

Defenders of the tariffs have been reassuring us for the last week that any economic pain from our new trade policies will be short-lived. History doesn’t exactly support that assertion. However, even if those defenders are correct, such pain will still weigh disproportionately on our tourist-dependent economy in the Silver State. 

The sheer lack of concern from supposedly “conservative” Republicans on the local or national level is an illustration of just how divorced from “free market” principles the GOP has become under Trump. 

Considering the way Republicans used to wring their hands over the prospect of America descending into a socialist nightmare, one would think they’d be a bit more critical about a president unilaterally imposing a historic tax hike on the American people. After all, weren’t these the same people who used to decry attempts from Washington, D.C., to “centrally plan” our economy? Didn’t Republicans publicly and incessantly criticize President Barack Obama’s desire to circumvent Congress with his pen and phone?

It’s hard to think of a bigger example of central planning or executive overreach than allowing a single man to reorganize and fundamentally transform the nation’s trade relations using massive tax hikes. 

With the notable exception of a few outspoken Republican lawmakers, the Republican Party has seemingly abandoned its long-professed belief in constitutional government and free markets. Just imagine, for a moment, if Presidents Joe Biden or Barack Obama had imposed a similar remaking of the world order without so much as a congressional hearing. 

It’s quite a reversal of principles for the sake of maintaining loyalty to the president. In fact, Trump might actually be the only one who has seemingly maintained consistency on the issue. He has always had a cartoonishly unsophisticated view of trade deficits and little regard for constitutional restraints on his power. 

Unfortunately, that cartoonishly unsophisticated view on trade has been the defining feature of “liberation day” from the start. Despite being described as “reciprocal” tariffs, Trump’s slew of new rates were actually “calculated as the tariff rate necessary to balance bilateral trade deficits between the U.S. and each of our trading partners,” according to the Office of the United States Trade Representative. 

In other words, they weren’t merely designed to match the tariffs of other nations, they were designed to tax away trade deficits.

That is why, for example, goods coming from Israel were set to face a 17 percent tariff as part of Trump’s liberation plan, despite the Jewish state already vowing to eliminate tariffs on American goods. It wasn’t a rate arrived at by the administration based on actual reciprocity, it was a rate apparently designed to ensure America only buys from Israel as many goods as we sell them in return. 

It’s a ludicrous goal that is completely untethered to economic reality. After all, how would America ever have a “balanced” trade relationship with, say, South Korea? Korea’s economy is a fraction the size of America’s with a per capita gross domestic product roughly $50,000 less than ours. Our trade imbalance with that nation is due largely to the fact we are far richer and more populous than they are and we therefore buy more things. 

The only way we will ever “balance” trade with smaller nations, poorer nations or nations with natural comparative advantages is to impoverish ourselves to the point we’re no longer a nation of 340 million relatively prosperous individuals. Trade is inherently imbalanced when individuals, corporations and nations are free to pursue their own ends — however, that imbalance isn’t necessarily “bad.” Often, it results in a marketplace full of more choice, prosperity and economic growth for everyone involved. 

In our own lives, we understand this instinctually. Most of us have a “trade deficit” with our barbers and hairstylists — but none of us are willing to artificially tax ourselves for each haircut until our barbers start buying an equal amount of goods or services from us. 

Nonetheless, that’s now our government’s approach to international trade, thanks to Trump’s self-declared authority to remake the world economy in his own image. No wonder there’s turmoil in the stock market. One man with such a tenuous grasp of the topic declaring dictatorial rule over the global economy is naturally going to breed a bit of uncertainty and panic. 

And that uncertainty is already beginning to take a toll on Nevada. As it turns out, the economic fallout from telling the world we’re no longer interested in taking part in the global economy will hit our little slice of the American economy particularly hard. As things unfold, “liberation day” isn’t going to age well for the Republican cheerleaders who have replaced their principles with uncritical loyalty to their leader. 

But then again, that’s probably going to be the least of anyone’s concern amid all the potential inflation, economic ruin and supposed “liberation” their cowardice is inviting upon the rest of us.

Michael Schaus is a communications and branding expert based in Las Vegas, Nevada, and founder of Schaus Creative LLC — an agency dedicated to helping organizations, businesses and activists tell their story and motivate change. He has more than a decade of experience in public affairs commentary, having worked as a news director, columnist, political humorist, and most recently as the director of communications for a public policy think tank. Follow him on Twitter @schausmichael or on Substack @creativediscourse.