This week, on April 2nd, the United States will begin to impose import tariffs on all countries which levy their own on US exports, including a 25 percent tariff on all imported cars.Hudson Meadwell writes that rather than thinking of Trump’s rhetoric and rapid policy changes as chaos and confusion, we should recognise that they are a sign not only of Trump’s magical thinking but also his desire for an American imperial republic with him as the strongman in charge.
The American political landscape is changing fundamentally as we speak. Taking it all in, in some sensible way, is a challenge. How should we think about the current imbroglio? We might start politely: Trump is presiding over the reorganization and redirection of the federal bureaucracy, its para-public organizations, and other organizations in civil society with programs and budgets that draw on federal government support. This is a polite description of what is happening. Put another way, we are observing a purge.
Doing justice to Trump’s behavior
Even this observation sounds mundane. It evokes images of democratic ‘backsliding’, or ‘creeping authoritarianism’, a ’slow coup’, an ‘autocratic’ shift. These are standard social scientific frames of analysis in which we can slot the ‘American case’, as it unfolds in real time. I will suggest, though, that something is missing in the reflexive turn to these terms -to authoritarianism, autocracy, the dynamics of coups or the demands of democracy – when we try to make sense of where America is heading. These are descriptions that do not do full justice to Trump’s weirdness or to his oddball importance in what we are now living. After all, this is the man who recently proposed that he be installed as the reigning master of ceremonies at Kennedy Centre galas.
It’s one thing to imagine the rebuilding and repurposing (and eventually renaming?) of the Kennedy Centre in the image of the new ruler, followed by similar moves toward other federal buildings freed up by the purges. That might be interpreted as a page from the coup master’s playbook. But naming yourself MC? What’s next? A commission for an ersatz military uniform so that the commander-in-chief can salute in full regalia on special occasions? Trump’s narcissism and male vanity are evidently unbounded, and they are everywhere visible. We need to come to grips with the contribution that his male narcissism is making to the ongoing upheaval in Washington and beyond.
“President Trump at the Kennedy Center – March 17, 2025” by The White House is United States government work
Trump’s DreamWorld and desires for an imperial republic
This leads to my first proposed correction to these analytical frames*.* There is undoubtedly a political imaginary in play in the current situation. There is direction to all of this. It is misleading to characterize the turmoil as mere chaos and confusion. The correction: The political imaginary in play is an expression of Trump’s fantasy life, what I will call Trump’s DreamWorld. Fantasy is a psychological reality to be reckoned with in identifying the motivational forces that drive Trump.
A second correction is somewhat blander. Generic discussions of authoritarianism and autocracy, or of coups are very important, but do not capture the specificities of America. We need to be explicit about these because this is where the American story begins. I emphasize these – America’s history of territorial aggrandizement as it consolidated its borders in the Americas, and its devotion to a republican form of government. What we may be witnessing might be better described as a shift from a contested constitutional republic toward a full-blown imperial republic, rather than treated as a transition toward autocracy or authoritarianism. The transition to an imperial republic is not yet a fait accompli and may never be complete and could eventually be rolled back because of domestic and foreign opposition. Nevertheless, it is the direction in which American politics is tilting these days under Trump. Starting here reminds us that what we are observing is fully home grown, we are not talking about a foreign object lodged in the body politic.
When we talk about an ‘imperial republic’, ‘imperial’ is the more important part of the phrase, given the obvious connections between the continuing domestic onslaught in America and the question of America’s rightful place in the world. The political imaginary in play is anything but local. Its grandiosity encompasses all the world beyond the borders of America.
What Trump’s tariff war tells us about his international agenda
It is Trump’s trash talk about tariffs that reveals a great deal about this administration’s political imaginary. Trump has made tariffs a focal point in the international economy. Threats of tariffs to come, and the actual implementation of tariffs, have been manipulated quite deliberately by Trump and his team, to roil markets and to keep opposition, domestic and foreign, on their back foot. The question of tariffs has given Trump the power to set an international economic agenda and the Trump administration has been a very aggressive first mover. America leads, and others follow.
But Trump’s tariffs are nothing like a textbook case of a trade war. None of the public reasons he has offered for the imposition of tariffs are credible. America has not been ‘scammed’, ‘ripped off’, or ‘suckered’ by foreign actors. The European Union is not ‘screwing’ America, which is no surprise since the EU was not purpose-built with highway robbery in mind. Canada is not being subsidized by America. All of this is contrived. America is being portrayed as the victim in an international melodrama.
Despite the rhetoric coming out of Washington about reciprocity and fairness, talk which revels in bad faith, there is no credible argument or theory of justice that is motivating Trump’s tariffs. But there is a great deal of immature, self-serving whining to be heard in the imperial capital. Perhaps the most transparently disingenuous piece of rhetoric surrounding tariffs is the often-repeated assertion by Trump’s cronies that tariffs levied by America on Canada are an economic weapon in a drug war. We will have to credit American policymakers with an incredible degree of stupidity if we take at face value the claim that tariffs directed at Canada are designed to limit the flow of drugs (or persons for that matter) across the northern border. Of course, this is not what is going on.
“Premier’s statement on removing all U.” (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) by BC Gov Photos
Something else is afoot. Canadians cottoned to it quickly. True to its past, this imperial republic under Trump covets territories and resources to its north, for no other reason than they do not yet possess them. Manifest destiny is not yet dead, and the frontier is not fixed. So, we see through Trump’s trash talk about tariffs. It’s all rather transparent. Trump’s appetite for booty and for plunder, for swag, is public knowledge. Living ‘side by each’, however, across an extended undefended border, Canadians are especially sensitive to the likelihood of American aggrandizement and bad faith. That said, Canadians have refused to play the role assigned to us (I am Canadian) in Trump’s fantasy world.
Trump is wrong about tariff revenue – but it shows his desire for power
There are additional features of the rhetoric coming out of Washington, around tariffs, that reveal Trump’s political imaginary — his fantasy world. This is an opportunity to examine this rhetoric more closely. The Trump administration is evidently interested in revenue tariffs. As others have pointed out, there is, in the first instance, something old fashioned about tariffs-as-revenue. Revenue tariffs harken back to an era in which governments and bureaucracies were very small, and states did not have the institutional capacity to levy and collect income tax from the general population. Typically, as the infrastructural capacity of states grew, income taxes came to replace tariffs as a source of government revenue, so much so that tariff revenue has become a miniscule source of government revenue in most modern states and economies.
In the American case, while a temporary income tax was levied by Lincoln in the civil war, the federal income tax only became permanent in 1913, after which income tax came to dominate revenue collection. This 20th century trend was international in scope, although punctuated by periods when tariffs increased temporarily in importance as a source of revenue, such as during the 1930s, and marked by variation across countries, but the trend is real and substantial. Income taxes replaced tariff revenues as a source of government revenue.
Trump has publicly fantasized about revenue from tariffs replacing revenue from income taxes – a fantasy under which income taxes are imagined disappearing altogether. That is stranger than it might appear at first glance. The apocryphal slogan of the American Revolution – ‘no taxation without representation’ has been turned on its head so that it is could now be read as ‘no representation without taxation’. This is a political fantasy in which a ruler imagines consolidating political power in himself, unfettered by the constraints of a representative assembly. So, buried inside Trump’s bizarre throwaway line about tariff revenue replacing income tax, there is an ugly piece of primitive political thinking to be considered. This is the fantasy of a wannabe strongman imagining political life without limits on the exercise of his power.
Taxes are also about social solidarity
The political logic of this fantasy indirectly confirms the importance of the tax nexus in modern political life. Here is one through-line: The general transition toward the primacy of the income tax coincided with (some might say was made possible by) an increasing degree of social solidarity and sense of collective, shared responsibility among citizens. But whatever the dynamics of the relationship between taxation and emergent collective identities, this proposition should have application: Transaction costs of income tax collection are lower when the tax is deemed legitimate; otherwise, shirking and evasion may overwhelm the ability of a central authority to gather tax revenue.
No doubt this is schematic, but it may do for present purposes: Many of the rights we associate with citizenship come from historic bargains in which notional subjects became citizens by way of political exchanges with rulers. Do away with taxes and then you can do away with concessions characteristic of these exchanges. Hence, the attraction to an aspiring strongman, in lieu of the revolutionary slogan, of an alternative association such as: ‘No taxes, no representation’. No wannabe strongman wants to voice the second part of the slogan, of course. It can remain unsaid and still have historical force. A strongman can tolerate a representative assembly. They can have their uses. Contemporary competitive authoritarianism shows they can, some historical cases likely do as well. But the legislatures of competitive authoritarians exist mainly as window dressing, and in subordination to their principals.
In somewhat more concrete terms than this, Trump and his administration also have pointed out how they imagine tariff revenue can reshape the tax nexus: The revenue from tariffs will fund those regressive tax cuts for the wealthy which were put in place in Trump’s first administration, and which the current regime plans to continue. In turn, this will allow the government to cut funding to other programs – to precisely those collective programs Americans pay taxes to support. And if this is not primitive enough, we can harken back (as some supporters have) to the American Founding, the fount of all that makes America exceptional, and to the Founders who were wise enough to live on tariff revenue alone. This is, politely put, the political imaginary currently in play – it is a projection of Trump’s inner life where he is the strongman.
Tribute for an imperial president
There is, as well, another element to tariff talk in the Trump administration that needs exposure because it casts the Trumpian interest in tariff revenue in a light that talk about trade per se cannot capture. Trump is not interested in tariff revenue as much as he is interested directly in tribute. Tariff revenue may be as close as he can get to tribute in its classical sense, which dates to ancient and medieval worlds. Tribute and fealty, of course, are trappings of imperial domination.
Trump has given public expression to this fantasy. On multiple occasions, he has imagined that tariff revenues will be paid by other countries engaged in bilateral trading relations with America. Of course, we know that the revenue/tribute generated by tariffs is not paid by other countries. In the ordinary course of tariffs, tariff revenues come from payments made by domestic importers. This ordinary talk about the mechanics of tariffs cannot capture the fulsomeness of Trump’s fantasy life. That is why trade theory, economic theory more generally, and the political economy of tariffs may somewhat miss the point when it comes to interpreting what Trump is up to.
‘President Trump Auto Tariffs Announcement in the Oval Office‘ – March 26, 2025 by The White House is United States government work
The Trump view is a very weird way to think of tariffs but, in his mind, these aren’t really tariffs. He is not really levying tariffs but, rather, exacting tribute. Tariff revenue is second-best compared to direct tribute, but it will do. Economic access to America may be granted at his discretion but it will come at a price. Trading with America becomes a privilege that only he, as President, can grant. America is thereby reimagined — as his household economy.
Trump’s magical thinking about tariffs and markets
Trade theory may be of limited value in understanding Trump’s tariff talk because it cannot map his fantasy life, but it does help expose other features of Trump’s expectations of tariffs. Trump also has claimed that tariffs will reshape the American economy by encouraging foreign companies to relocate their production to America to gain access to its markets without bearing the costs of tariffs. By the same logic, American firms with production facilities abroad will be encouraged (‘incentivized’) to return stateside for roughly the same reasons. Tariff barriers will encourage capital mobility as firms move to ensure access to American markets.
On the surface, this looks superficially sensible. But it turns out to be a form of magical thinking, consistent with Trump’s DreamWorld. For a tariff to have these consequences, it should be very high – so high that foreign producers are deterred from selling goods in American markets. That they are then expected to pack up and move their business to America is an overweening simplicity that I won’t comment on, except to note that this thinking appears blind to the complexity of supply chains in the contemporary world economy and to the dynamics of capital flows. I will point out, however, that a prohibitive tariff of this sort will not generate any government revenue. If goods don’t enter America, they can’t be ‘revenued’. If a tariff is to maximize revenue, it should not be too low or too high. But a prohibitive tariff – the higher the better. Tariffs that are imagined as an encouragement to capital mobility, the sort praised by Trump, will not provide tariff revenue. To think otherwise is to fall prey to magical thinking: A tariff that provides revenue cannot succeed in inducing capital mobility, and a tariff that is so high that it induces capital mobility cannot succeed in generating tariff revenue.
Trump imagines he can have tariffs both ways, which reveals the final element of the Trump fantasy – its grandiosity. On April 2, 2025, by introducing ‘reciprocal tariffs’, Trump imagines America becoming something like a ‘discriminating monopolist’, setting tariffs for all trading transactions with others in the international economy: Revenue tariffs here, prohibitive tariffs there, an exemption over there, all established by America. This might reconcile the tension between the revenue and protection functions of tariffs by imagining America with the freedom to implement a world-wide American-controlled tariff regime in which these functions are mixed across its trading relations. But this fantasy, in which a date is given on which the old-world ends, and a new world begins, aside from its pseudo-millenarianism, is nothing if not grandiose.
(Author’s Note: This article was completed and submitted to LSEUSAPP on Thursday morning, March 26, 2025, prior to Trump’s executive order in the afternoon of the same day announcing new tariffs in the auto sector. I thank Chris Gilson for his editorial suggestions).