“Everything at Walmart is going to double as a result of Trump’s tariffs on China,” declared John Cochrane, an economist at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He said much, much more in a snarky, pessimistic “analytical” piece that ran Saturday in The Guardian — which included such snappy soundbites as “Really, like the boy who cried wolf, [Trump] can only do this so many times,” and “These tariffs are an answer in search of a question” — but his line about everything doubling at Walmart jumps at you for one REALLY big reason:
It’s absolutely, positively, completely, 100% absurd.
There is NO possibility that “everything” at Walmart will double in price next week, next month, next year, or even the year after that! None, nada, non, nein, nyet, zilch, zippo. In fact, I’m so confident about this, that I hereby offer the following challenge to Mr. John Cochrane:
If, on April 12, 2027, everything at Walmart has doubled in price, I’ll donate $1 million to a charity of your choice.
However, if everything hasn’t doubled in price, you are required to:
- Spend at least 30 minutes listening to my kids explain all the references in that “Minecraft” movie. (No earplugs and/or AirPods.)
- Wear a bright, shiny MAGA cap around campus until “everything” at Walmart actually does double in price.
- Tattoo “Steve Bannon Is a Sexy Beast” on your forehead.
- [Future acts of humiliation TBD.]
Look, he’s a professional economist — and he must be a helluva crackerjack, because he’s representing an elite academic institute. His knowledge and observations of the economy ought to be piercing and insightful. Normally, when we lowly serfs are fortunate enough to receive crumbs of wisdom from an academic super-genius such as Cochrane, we assume it’s correct.
And even when we kinda-sorta-maybe suspect these super-geniuses are wrong, we almost always keep it to ourselves. Hey, they’re the experts, not us. We don’t have the street cred to call ‘em out.
But you don’t need Stanford-level street cred to recognize idiocy when you see it. Declaring point-blank that EVERYTHING at Walmart will double in price was a ridiculous, stupid statement.
It’s blatantly untrue.
Not everything at Walmart even comes from China! And not everything from China is twice as cheap as everywhere else on planet Earth. As we noted earlier in the week:
In the 1970s, China’s median age was 18 years old. In 2020, it was 38.4. Today, it’s in the 40s.
Older populations consume less. (And older workers expect higher compensation. Trust me: I’m in my 50s.)
Meanwhile, just beyond our southern border is Mexico — a nation with much friendlier demographics. The media age in Mexico is still in the 20s! So if American industries are truly dependent on cheap labor, there’s no need to sail all the way to the Far East.
All we have to do is look south.
China still has a lot of factories, but it no longer has a monopoly on cheap labor. Instead, the opposite is true: China is a country of old people. Aside from the institutional momentum and sunken costs, it’s no longer an enticing option for Big Industry.
Traditionally, the Democrats had always loved boots-on-the-ground infrastructure projects. The more money wasted spent on the project, the better! Of course, in the good ol’ days, the union laborers who benefited from those projects voted Democratic. Not anymore. So today, either coincidentally or deliberately, the Democrats have turned Debbie Downer on the biggest manufacturing renewal project in America since World War II.
Because when you strip away the bleated yelps and hysterical cries of the anti-Trump media, that’s the end goal of these policies: the Americanization of our manufacturing supply chain.
For a slew of reasons, manufacturing supply chains have gone global, but with a decidedly Eastern tilt. China monetized its billion-strong population base, growing into an economic superpower over the past half-century — and, potentially, a military rival. But over time, demographics change.
And when they do, so does everything else.
With the rapid-fire evolution of artificial intelligence, robotics, and manufacturing technology, there’s excellent reasons to believe that a new, Americanized supply chain in 2025 will be cheaper, more efficient — and less environmentally harmful — than our current chain that’s tethered to Beijing and (all too often) child labor.
Sure, there’ll be growing pains. In the short term, it’ll likely dent the stock holdings of (rich) investors. But in the long term?
Jobs for union workers! The renewal of America’s manufacturing infrastructure! Environmental improvement! A strike against child labor!
Yet America’s liberals — both inside and outside of Stanford — are saying, “No, it’s not worth it, we need to keep the status quo. Gotta protect Wall Street!”
It’s hard to keep up with liberal virtue-signaling, but today apparently, it involves vandalizing other people’s electric cars, trading your EV for a gas-guzzling SUV, murdering healthcare CEOs, protecting Wall Street, and opposing tariffs against exploitive, abusive, undemocratic countries such as China — even when union jobs, the environment, and the lives of children are at stake.
They’ve gone from occupying Wall Street to shilling for Wall Street!
Getting weird, man.
“It always comes down to tariffs, and then the reasons for them keep changing,” said John Cochrane.
Same could be said about the objections against them.
Drop me a line, John. Let’s make a bet.
And let’s find out what YOU think of that Minecraft movie.
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