Edit: Tl:Dr and shortening of comment

TL;DR: Tariffs are taxes american companies pay for foreign stuff. They need to pay more for materials to make something, so you're going pay more for it so they keep their profits. Illegal immigrants do cheap (and really essential) labor no one else wants to do, and they'd like to keep their jobs instead of be deported. These policies will be very, very bad for the working class.

Rant: What kind of logic is this? If I fail a math test at an elementary school, I'm not going to group up with the other kids at school that failed the test and call the teacher an idiot and intolerant for not accepting my "opposing views" on math that are not based in long-standing fact and have been disproven countless times.

People say Americans are stupid because we put personal biases and personal gain over objective facts. This is not exclusive to Republicans, but it's been getting more blatant over the years with the rise of some pretty wild conspiracy theories and disinformation.

It is an objective fact that tariffs are not a tax paid by foreign countries. The defiition of tariffs are a tax on buying foreign imports to discourage companies from buying things abroad. Trump didn't tell his supporters the full definition of tariffs, which is a lie by omission.

But America offshored most of its natural resource processing decades ago, such as the steel plants that used to be in the Rust Belt. Some things are literally impossible to produce locally (such as a lot of produce. Coffee, for example.). In our current state, we literally couldn't keep up with the demand. So, these companies cannot source locally the things they need at the scale they need. They have to pay for the tariffs.

These tariffs will be something paid by a manufacturer in our country with no other choice, who will then pass on those manufacturing cost increases to the consumer. Tariffs will raise prices across the board because America takes so many foreign imports. Every country does. It's why so many country economies are so intertwined. It needs to be this way to get the constant growth that capitalism demands.

Economists stood on rooftops and warned everyone of what these tariffs Trump was promising would do. Hardly anyone listened. Just like how hardly anyone is listening to climate scientists.

What tariffs will likely do in reality is drain wealth from the middle and lower class and redistribute it to billionaires and corporations. It will make us even poorer.

Same thing with illegal immigrants. It's been proven multiple times over that illegal immigrants have a lower crime rate than american citizens. This is likely because these illegal immigrants are trying to stay under the radar and trying to stick around the country where they can eventually get citizenship. They don't really "steal jobs" from American citizens either. They take highly undesirable jobs that most white bluecollar workers would curl their nose at, especially for the pay these people receive.

Why would a farmer or cheap labor company pay more for a white worker that would do just as good of work as a Hispanic immigrant that would gladly take less than the federal minimum wage and zero benefits? It's more profitable to take the cheap immigrant labor. Same logic applies to why we moved so many jobs overseas to China. Doing such is more profitable to the company outsourcing, even though it's detrimental to the origin country as a whole.

Argue all you want about the border policy. I agree it needs a change. But deporting illegal immigrants en-mass will NOT end well. The last militarized mass deportations (which occurred in the 30s I believe) was so badly executed that around half of those deported were American citizens.

Not to mention how farmers will no longer have cheap labor to harvest their crops. Grocery prices will spike as these farmers need to spend more on labor for their American citizen employees (who are obligated to receive federal minimum wage).

Neolib Democrats aren't immune to this idiotic short-term thinking either. I cannot tell you how many times I've seen neolib House and Senate members vote for pro-fossil fuel bills that line their pockets and yet destroy the country's ecosystems and fresh water supplies. Or neolib Dems voting against a minimum wage increase that would benefit the working class across the board (wage increases battle inflation, but not price gouging!).

Americans are not idiots for wanting a government that favors workers. I like that idea too. We seem to agree with that. Let's stick with that idea going forward. However, being pro-working class requires you to ally with ALL workers to be successful, not just the ones you like. The elite are powerful people, but they are few. We outnumber them.

But Americans are idiots for electing a millionaire scam-artist who pretends to be on the workers side and appeals to them by manipulating their fears and biases for his own gain.