Indirect Taxation

 In his Main Currents in American Thought, the historian V.L. Parrington treats it as axiomatic that the Left/liberal tradition hates tariffs. 

This is a valuable corrective to the confusions of our current ideological era—when many on the pro-labor Left seem unsure of whether they are supposed to be against Trump's tariffs or not. After all, the tariffs violate "free market" neoliberal orthodoxy—so shouldn't the Left like them? Besides, the Left spent decades railing against NAFTA; so doesn't that mean we support protectionism? 

Thus, some labor leaders have praised the tariffs—even ones who endorsed Harris and criticized Trump in the last election. Other liberals have simply gone quiet about the tariffs. They don't know what to make of them. And anyway—Trump is doing so many terrible things in the more obviously and directly evil domains of deportations, authoritarianism, and human rights violations—why spend time talking about the tariffs at all? 

But what if I told you that Trump's tariffs and his human rights violations are intimately connected? 

Parrington doesn't do a lot to help us reach this conclusion. As I say, he mostly treats it as so axiomatic that tariffs are a violation of liberal principles, that we only get the fleetingest glimpses as to why he thinks so. (The tariffs were bad for agrarian interests—we gather from Parrington—as discussed in a previous post—but he doesn't go into great detail on the subject.)

James Russell Lowell's The Biglow Papers—a classic of American radical protest literature—gives us a better window into why exactly nineteenth century American leftists and liberals objected to trade protectionism. 

The extended poems in The Biglow Papers are written in the voice of a disgruntled Yankee farmer who is upset about the U.S. invasion of Mexico—which he sees (rightly) as both an unjustified war of imperialist aggression and a thinly-veiled excuse to extend the reach of slavery. 

Because of his opposition to the war (masterminded chiefly by the Democrats), Biglow is accused of being a Whig—the rival party at the time. But Lowell's fictitious "editor" of the papers disavows the label. He says that Biglow was no such partisan of the Whig cause either—since he disapproves of their policies of "protection" (that is—the tariffs). 

But why does the radical Biglow have such a problem with tariffs? Eventually—the editor fills in the blanks. It's because the "tayriffs"—as they are known in Yankee jargon—are a form of "indirect taxation" the government uses to fund its wars of aggression and its extension of slavery. 

Lowell notes: if the American people were asked to pay directly for weapons to kill innocent people—and all just to create new slave-states—they might think twice. But because the tariffs diffuse the expense through raising the price of innumerable consumer goods—people don't notice how much of their money is going for purposes utterly inimical to human life and freedom. 

If, by means of indirect taxation, the bills for every extraordinary outlay were brought under our immediate eye, so that, like thrifty housekeepers, we could see where and how fast the money was going, we should be less likely to commit extravagances [he writes.] If we could know that a part of the money we expend for tea and coffee goes to buy powder and balls, and that it is Mexican blood which makes the clothes on our backs more costly, it would set some of us athinking. 

And so—in Lowell's verdict—both of the two major parties of the time were responsible for the same evil. The Whigs may not have been the ones who invaded Mexico—but they were nonetheless bankrolling the policy of expansionism through their tariffs. The Democrats, meanwhile, might claim to oppose the tariffs—but they were benefitting from the revenues raised by the same policy to make their war of aggression against Mexico for the expansion of slavery. 

And so, Lowell writes, the Democrats may "talk agin [that is, against] tayriffs," but they "act fer a high one." And so—in the choice between the two parties at every election season, the average voter is left with only a choice between "the great principles of Tweedledum" and the "gospel according to Tweedledee."

I said above that Trump's tariffs are intimately connected to his human rights abuses, then—and Lowell explains how. Not only are the tariffs a highly regressive "indirect tax"—for which the poor must pay much more than the rich, since the policy is essentially a tax on consumption—but they also are generating revenue for a policy of war, deportation, kidnapping, and authoritarianism. 

Right now, after all, Trump has recently launched an undeclared secret war—ostensibly against drug cartels in Latin America. He has so far blown up one boat in the Caribbean sea, summarily executing 11 people without charge or trial. There is no reason to think the people on this boat posed an imminent threat to anyone—or even that they were actually trafficking drugs at all. And yet, the Trump administration is proud of this murder they committed—and wants to do more of the same. 

The prospect of the U.S. taking unilateral military action south of the border has understandably alarmed Mexican officials, who fear the specter of a repeat of the 1848 U.S. invasion. The New York Times reported yesterday that "President [of Mexico] Claudia Sheinbaum has warned Washington for months against any attempt at unilateral U.S. military action on Mexican soil." We see—then—that the history of military aggression Lowell protested again appears to be at risk of repeating itself. 

Lowell also wrote his book in protest against the practice of capturing and returning people to slavery, after they had escaped the South. And this too finds its echo in our own era. Trump's deportation policy may not always be sending people back into the hands of literal enslavers—but sometimes they do—traffickers at least—and more often to the hands of killers, persecutors, and torturers. 

As we speak, a federal court is weighing whether Trump is to be permitted to get away with the fact that he just deported nine Nigerian and Gambian nationals—several of whom had previously received Convention Against Torture (CAT) protections in the United States. These CAT protections are supposed to ensure that they cannot lawfully be removed to places where they fear torture—including their home countries; so the administration sent them to Ghana instead. 

But Ghana, it appears (with the knowledge of the administration, it also appears) is now preparing to send these same men to exactly the countries they originally fled—in violation of their human rights under CAT. 

One would think the law is clear on this—the U.S. recognized CAT as binding and has incorporated it into its domestic law. But the Supreme Court recently gave the Trump administration the green light to deport people to third countries in Africa without first offering them CAT screenings. 

Does this SCOTUS ruling apply even to people who already received CAT protections in the U.S.? We have no idea—since the Supreme Court per usual didn't explain their reasoning, and just gave Trump the go-ahead to start putting people on planes to South Sudan by means of an emergency order. 

Yet, this same Court's conservative majority has also been astonishingly touchy if district court judges incorrectly guess as the secret reasoning they may have used—seeing this is a form of "defiance"—which puts the lower court judges in an impossible bind. So—Is the administration to be allowed to deport people to be persecuted and tortured in Africa? The Supreme Court doesn't seem to think so far that the law has anything to say against it. 

The comparison with the 19th century fugitive slave law does not seem inapposite in this context. The administration is abducting African nationals who have a legal basis to stay in the United States, and sending them without due process on a reverse "middle passage" across the Atlantic—to be held in a "squalid, open-air detention camp" and deported to places where they face persecution and torture. 

"It is piracy to steal a man in Guinea; what is it to do this in Boston?"—as Theodore Parker asked of the fugitive slave law in the 19th century. "If a man pluck an apple of mine, he shall be in danger of the justice; but if he steal my brother, I must be silent," Lowell writes in the Biglow Papers. "Who says this?" he sardonically asks—"Our Constitution." 

Behold the famous States
Harrying Mexico
With rifle and with knife!

Or who, with accent bolder,
Dare praise the freedom-loving mountaineer?
I found by thee, O rushing Contoocook!
And in thy valleys, Agiochook!
The jackals of the negro-holder.

—as Emerson wrote in the same era. And alas, not much has changed. The U.S. government is still harrying Mexico with the threat of rifles—still bombing people without cause in the Caribbean sea—and still kidnapping Africans and deporting them to persecution and bondage. 

And I agree—to be sure—that these policies are more important than Trump's tariffs. They are a greater and more direct affront to human rights and human dignity than some protectionist trade policy. 

But we also shouldn't forget—for exactly the reasons Lowell told us—that Trump's tariffs are in fact bound up with his human rights violations. Because his tariffs are what is paying for these abominations. Every time we pay more for coffee (which has markedly risen in price since the tariffs went into effect)—we are helping to bankroll Trump's drone strikes, his deportations, his abductions of innocent people to the hands of traffickers and torturers. 

And indeed: If we could know that a part of the money we expend for tea and coffee goes to buy powder and balls, and that it is Mexican [or Venezuelan! or Nigerian! or Gambian!] blood which makes the clothes on our backs more costly, it would set some of us athinking.