Trump's Tariff Policies: A Critique
Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff
Democracy at Work
4.8 • 2.1K Ratings
🗓️ 17 March 2026
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week on Economic Update, Professor Wolff explains how and why Trump's tariff policies add uncertainties to global trade that undermine the very benefits he promised tariffs would bring. He also explains why the United States has never truly been a democracy, but rather an authoritarian society whose current shift is from a polite authoritarianism to a blunt, unvarnished one. The core argument is that the workplace—whether a factory, office, or store—is organized in a fundamentally authoritarian way, and that this structure then extends to and infects the rest of society.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome, friends, to another edition of Economic Update, a weekly program devoted to the economic |
| 0:27.1 | dimensions of our lives and those of our children. |
| 0:30.8 | I'm your host, Richard Wolfe. |
| 0:35.1 | Before we begin today's program, I want to ask you to please subscribe, to like, and to share |
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| 1:29.9 | Or by signing up as a paid subscriber to our growing substack community, |
| 1:36.1 | Democracy atwork.com.com. |
| 1:39.8 | And of course, our thanks. |
| 1:43.9 | Today's program is focused on two major topics. And of course, our thanks. |
| 1:44.6 | Today's program is focused on two major topics. |
| 1:49.0 | We'll deal with the first one in the first half and the second one in the second half. |
| 1:55.9 | I call both of them critiques, that is, they offer a criticism. |
| 2:01.1 | In the first case, it's a criticism of Donald Trump's tariff program, which really should |
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