By Jam Magdaleno THE PROBLEM with the MAGA analysis of US President Donald Trump’s tariff decisions is not that it misunderstands economics. It’s that economics was never the point to begin with. In Trump’s America, the economic consequences of protectionist policy are an afterthought. The decision to impose tariffs is not judged by efficiency or output, but by its symbolic weight. It is, first and foremost, a semiotic act: an assertion of sovereignty, vengeance against globalism, a performance of strength. Before the new 10% universal import tariff took effect, Trump’s supporters had already declared victory. Manufacturing would come home. American industry would rise again. Never mind that similar tariffs in his first term resulted in job losses, higher prices, and stalled output. The New York Fed found US businesses and consumers bore nearly all the cost of the 2018 tariffs. The Tax Foundation and other economists warn that a universal tariff could cost American households hundreds to thousands of dollars more each year, depending on income level and consumption — functioning like an indirect tax on consumers. The Center for American Progress (CAP) estimates that his 2025 universal tariff will cost households an additional $1,500 per year. Yet the MAGA base remains unmoved. To them, tariffs are not about cost-benefit. They are about retribution. Never mind the 16 independent Nobel laureate economists who sounded the alarm on Trump’s economic policies before the 2024 presidential election — even conservative economists have called the policy what it is: a populist tax hike. Thomas Sowell has long warned that protectionist sentiment appeals to the desire to “do something” in response to national decline, regardless of whether it works. Former Bush adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin now calls Trump’s plan “inflationary by design.” Larry Kudlow, once Trump’s own economic advisor, has described it as a “misguided fantasy.” But this critique misses the point. MAGA doesn’t care if the economics don’t work. They’ll find a reason to defend it anyway. The tariff is never evaluated in isolation — it is always subsumed within a broader worldview. If it fails, it’s because of sabotage, globalist betrayal, or disloyal bureaucrats. If it succeeds, it proves Trump was right all along. There is no test that could disprove the narrative, because the narrative comes first. Take Trump’s brief stare down with Canada as a case in point. When he threatened to impose 25% tariffs on Canadian auto exports earlier this year, it seemed like another front in the coming global trade war. But just days later, the administration announced a “pause.” No tweets, no bluster — just a quiet walk-back. What happened? Mark Carney happened. Canada’s Prime Minister, and a seasoned economist, had quietly increased Canadian holdings of US Treasury bonds to over $350 billion. Then he coordinated with Japan and EU nations, signaling that if Trump escalated, they would begin a slow sell-off of US debt. A soft unwind — not a market crash, but a market warning. And it worked. Trump blinked. Not because of protests or economic reports, but because Carney used financial leverage, not rhetoric. And yet — even in retreat — the narrative survived. The MAGA base didn’t see surrender; they saw strategy. They claimed Trump was “reassessing,” “focusing on China,” or “outmaneuvering the globalists.” We’ve seen this pattern before: when Trump walked back his threat to impose auto tariffs on the EU and Japan in 2018, the move was reframed as a brilliant pressure tactic. When the US-China “Phase One” trade deal failed to deliver structural reforms and China fell short on purchase commitments, it was spun as groundwork for a tougher second phase — which never came. When Trump replaced NAFTA with the USMCA, a deal nearly identical in substance, his supporters hailed it as a total overhaul. It didn’t matter that he’d been outplayed or had to compromise. The story reshaped itself to protect the myth. This is the asymmetry at the heart of Trump-era political economy. Economists debate results; MAGA asserts meaning. The tariffs are not tools — they are declarations. They signal moral clarity. A desire to decouple from a rigged system. To punish those who “cheated” America. They are immune to technocratic analysis because they are not economic proposals. They are ideological manifestos. In Trump’s America, even when the policies fail, outcomes are not seen as policy failures but as evidence of a hard, necessary war. In 2018, US farmers lost billions in export revenue after China retaliated against Trump’s tariffs, yet many remained loyal, describing their sacrifice as part of a patriotic stand against exploitation. “It’s painful now, but someone had to do something,” one Illinois soybean farmer told NPR. When prices rose for goods like appliances and automobiles, supporters said they were willing to pay more if it meant buying American. Even when Ford reported $1 billion in losses due to steel tariffs, or when factory hiring slowed amid uncertainty, the suffering was recast as martyrdom — proof that Trump was taking on a rigged global system. This is why critiques based on economic data rarely land. Institutions like the New York Fed and the Tax Foundation showed that consumers bore the brunt of Trump’s tariffs and would continue to do so under his 2025 plan, yet these findings were dismissed as elite handwringing. The MAGA movement is not operating on the axis of efficiency. It is driven by a desire for justice as they define it — economic nationalism not as policy, but as redemption. And that’s the dangerous thing about Trump’s tariffs: they are not anchored in the real economy. They are anchored in a story. A story of betrayal, of comeback, of righteous struggle. And like any good story, inconvenient facts are cast as distractions. Only the arc matters. Only the hero must endure. Jam Magdaleno is a political communications expert and the head of the Information & Communications unit at the Foundation for Economic Freedom, a Philippine-based policy think tank.