by Daniel Brouse
June 29, 2025
Regarding Trump’s tariffs, while he did negotiate a few deals, the reality is that the tariffs themselves raised prices for many goods before any deals were even on the table, hitting consumers immediately. Ironically, the Trump tariffs represent the largest tax increase in U.S. history, even as Trump claims his “Big Beautiful Bill” is the largest tax cut ever—when in fact, it is largely the extension of preexisting tax cuts with marginal additional cuts that primarily benefit the wealthy.
It’s also a fact that U.S. debt and deficits ballooned under his first term, contributing to the economic pressures we’re all feeling now. The Fed’s balance sheet was set to start unwinding until COVID hit, after which, under Trump, it exploded by several trillions to its highest level in history, flooding the system with liquidity while interest rates were kept near zero. During Trump’s first term, about $7.8 trillion was added to the national debt, followed by another $6.7 trillion under Biden. Now, Trump’s current term is projected to add another $7–10 trillion, driven by deficits, tax cuts without offsets, and rising interest costs on the expanding debt.
Immigration, Labor, and the Collapse of Capitalism
Trump’s anti-immigration policies have further accelerated the decline in U.S. prosperity and the collapse of capitalism by choking off the labor supply essential for a healthy economy. By restricting both legal and undocumented immigration, the U.S. has faced labor shortages across critical sectors—from agriculture and food processing to healthcare, construction, and high-tech industries—driving up business costs and worsening inflation. Capitalism depends on a growing labor force to sustain consumption, production, and economic expansion. In fact, immigration has accounted for 80% of U.S. GDP growth over the last five years and is the only hope for sustaining Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare as the U.S. population rapidly ages. By cutting off the inflow of workers while simultaneously promoting tax cuts and deficit spending, Trump’s policies have created a situation where there are not enough workers to support the economy’s needs, weakening productivity while forcing companies to either raise prices or move operations abroad. This labor squeeze, paired with rising costs and collapsing demand, accelerates the breakdown of the consumer-driven system that capitalism requires to survive.
The Broken Math, Explained
As I detailed in The Broken Math of Today’s Economy: A Simplified Look, these policies are having unintended and compounding consequences:
Instead of bringing manufacturing and jobs back to the U.S., Trump’s white nationalism, trade wars and tariffs have effectively put America’s best companies on sale to foreign buyers. Now, companies like Nvidia, Google, Amazon, and even defense contractors like Lockheed Martin and Palantir are being snapped up at a discount by China and others, thanks to a weakening dollar and policy-induced instability.
Inflation and interest rates are directly tied to these policies. As shown in my 2018 paper, The Economic Monsters: Inflation and Interest Rates, I forecasted that Trump’s fiscal and trade policies would ignite inflation while destabilizing interest rates. Those predictions came true, and my follow-up papers published during Biden’s administration show how continuing these policies has kept the inflationary fires burning.
Climate destruction is another area where Trump’s policies have made the situation worse, as I discussed in Trump’s Climate Destruction. Ironically, the collapse of capitalism driven by these policies may end up reducing emissions in the long run by choking off the relentless consumerism that drives climate change.
This Is Not a Team Sport
Something some seem to be missing is that I’m a Republican. I thought Biden’s economic policies were terrible, and Kamala’s were even worse. But it is Trump’s policies that are driving the collapse of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency while pushing capitalism toward collapse.
Ironically, that’s what actually gives me hope. Trump is tanking the U.S. economy so quickly that the resulting collapse of consumerism may slow global warming and save us from ourselves. Go, Trump, go!
If we want to fix the country, we need to stop treating economic policy like a team sport and start focusing on what policies, spending, and decisions are actually doing to real people’s lives, regardless of who is in office.
I don’t rely on wishful thinking or party loyalty—I rely on math, data, and facts, and I encourage you to verify the numbers yourself. If we’re being fair, this crisis didn’t start with Trump or Biden; it began under the Bush administration with the launch of quantitative easing and the “printing of money” that has continued under every administration since, turning into an addiction that has now come due.
Trump’s tariffs and economic policies, paired with bipartisan fiscal irresponsibility, are driving inflation, destabilizing interest rates, collapsing the dollar’s global position, and ironically putting the U.S. economy on a crash course that may be the only thing fast enough to slow climate change.
The question we need to ask is simple: Are we ready to face these realities and demand policies that prioritize sustainability and stability over short-term political wins, or will we continue riding this collapse, hoping it saves us from ourselves?