On March 16, members of the Trump administration appeared on the Sunday morning network talk shows arguing that retaliatory tariffs are necessary for revitalizing American industries by promoting a “fair” international trade regime. On CBS’s Face the Nation broadcast, Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered this justification for retaliatory tariffs:

We don’t like the status quo. We are going to set a new status quo, and then we can negotiate something, if they want to, that is fair for both sides. But what we have now cannot continue. We have deindustrialized this country; deindustrialized the United States of America. There are things we can no longer make and we have to be able to make in order to be safe as a country and in order to have jobs. That’s why we had a rust belt, that’s why we’ve suffered all these important jobs that once sustained entire communities wiped out by trade that basically sent these factories, these jobs, this industrial capability, to other places that cannot and will not continue.

As Mises Institute President Thomas DiLorenzo pointed out in a recent Mises Wire article, the Trumpian demand for “fairness” in international trade boils down to an intensification of the tax harms inflicted on both American consumers and American producers, forcing them to pay higher prices. On NBC’s Meet the Press, after host Kristen Welker pressed Secretary of Commerce Scott Bessent several times about tariffs driving up prices; he finally responded:

Well, look, they don’t have to because I believe especially with the China tariffs that China’s manufacturers, they will eat the VAT, will eat the price or eat the tariffs. I believe that the currency adjusts. And I believe if we look during President Trump’s first term, that all the other things we do, if we’re deregulating, if we’re energy prices down, then, if we look across the spectrum, Americans will realize lower prices and better affordability.