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Welcome friends, to another edition of Economic Update, a weekly program devoted to the economic dimensions of our lives and and those of our children. I'm your host, Richard Wolff. Before we begin today's program, I want to ask you to please subscribe to, like and to share this video and the others that we produce. It is a way to broaden our reach well beyond what we ourselves can do and are doing all the time. For most of you who have not yet signed up for our Members Only Patreon that please do so. You can gain access to Patreon Members Only materials that we post up there and of course, support our work. Easy to do. You just go to patreon.com democracyatwork or you can find the link in the description below. You can also support our work by going to www.democracyatwork.info donate or by signing up as a paid subscriber to our growing substack community, democracyatwork.substack.com and of course, our thanks. Today's program is focused on two major topics. We'll deal with the first one in the first half and the second one in the second half. I call both of them critiques. That is, they offer a criticism. In the first case, it's a criticism of Donald Trump's tariff program, which really should be called the United States government's tariff program. Mr. Trump is, of course, the man who says it all, but it's a government that supports him, including much of the Congress and not just the Republicans. And so it is a basic part of American economic policy. I think it's a failure. I think it's a failure for reasons that aren't going away, which means the failure is unlikely to go away either. And this has to be spoken because it's a costly failure, as I will show you. And the second half of the program will be devoted to an idea that's gaining a lot of currency, that we live in a democracy that is becoming an authoritarian society instead. I think both those views are wrong. And I think it's worth making the case and provoking, I hope, conversations among you about these important issues that touch all of us in countless ways. Okay, let's begin. The Supreme Court of the United States broke open the issue of tariffs very profoundly when it decided or announced a decision late in February of this year that the tariff program of Mr. Trump, a good part of it, not all of it, but a good part of it, was illegal and that could not stand and ordered him to stop, violated the Supreme Court, said the Constitution of The United States. In other words, Mr. Trump was using a law in a way that contradicted the Constitution. And because the Supreme Court is sworn to uphold the Constitution as the primary document of the country, it felt, or at least six of the nine judges felt they had no option but to declare that Mr. Trump's use of that law that he claimed gave him authority was, in fact, a violation of the Constitution. Now, let's talk about that. The Constitution is very. It does not want to have the executive in charge of the money. Raising money for the government is expressly given to the Congress of the United States, particularly the House of Representatives, not to the president. Control of the money is in the hands of the Congress. Mr. Trump did not involve the Congress in his tariff program. He simply decided, all by himself, with whatever advisors he chose, to gather around, who was going to be charged, what kind of tariff, under what circumstances, of what size, for how long, everything. So it turns out that he can't do that. And the Supreme Court told him that. He immediately, in his usual blustery way, said he would all, no problem, find another law. Yeah, but as everybody who pays even a little bit of attention will immediately understand, you go find another law, Jack. And the Supreme Court is likely to find, once again, what it just told you, which is you can't find a law that gives you what the Constitution says cannot be yours. Now, Mr. Trump justified the imposition of tariffs on two grounds that, when you think about it, are one ground. But here are the one that the United States has been cheated by all of its trading partners, some more, some less, for many decades. No one in the world agrees with this, except maybe a few Americans who need to believe that the United States, which came out of World War II as a country with the richest economy, the biggest military, and the most rapid rate of growth, was in a position to be cheated by everybody else, including all the countries that had been destroyed by World War II. Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Russia. Silly. But he said it, and he said it over and over. Even more important, the second closely related reason that the tariffs were would really help the American economy. They would raise a ton of money, and that would make the government less likely to need to borrow. And why is that important? Because we're already a deeply indebted country. We're the number one debtor country in the world. No one else is close. And he said it would bring jobs to America. The promise for every politician, for anything that they say they're in favor of is it'll bring jobs and what jobs would it bring? Well, the idea was American companies and foreign companies with factories in, I don't know, China or Europe or Latin America, with a tariff. They'd have to pay that tariff. It's all it is. It's a tax on goods coming into the United States from outside. And the idea was, you see, they'd stop producing them outside because then there'd be the tariff to pay and they'd bring the factory back into the United States. Reshoring, they called it reshoring American manufacturing because if you produced it at home and you sold it in the United States, you wouldn't be liable to have to pay a tariff because you're not importing. That was the idea. Here are the results. Over the first year, February or late January 2025 to late January 2026, how many manufacturing jobs increased here in the United States? How successful was it? Here's the answer. We have 70,000 fewer manufacturing jobs at the end of this last year than we had at the beginning. If the tariffs were supposed to bring manufacturing jobs here, they are one total failure. And is the rest of the economy in good shape? Every poll indicates the opposite. Over the last year, the number one political issue became affordability. That's a nice long word. It simply means people don't have enough money, which is what the job of the economy is, is to give people enough money to pay their rent and to live decently. So it didn't work. And I'm not surprised. And I'm going to tell you why, because it'll tell you why the whole idea is crazy. No CEO, no corporation which has factories in any other part of the world is going to move them to the United States because of a tariff. Why not? Because, as Mr. Trump himself showed, the tariff one week was high, then it was lowered, then it was suspended for three months, then it was applied to this country, but not that country, then that was changed. In other words, everything about tariffs is uncertain. And when the Supreme Court rendered its decision, everything became even more uncertain. They're not going to come now, either, because if Mr. Trump hits them with another tariff, which he said he would do, and uses another piece of legislation to justify it, which he said he would do, the Supreme Court is likely toand you're not going to spend millions of dollars to move your factory, when in fact, the tariff leading you to think about doing it may be rendered illegal by the Supreme Court any day now. The same uncertainty that made the first year of tariffs fail will make any future years of tariffs fail. But Then there's the less obvious result of tariffs. When Mr. Trump declared tariffs on everybody, remember the picture of all the countries, each one listed how bad it was, more bad, less bad, and what it would get as a punishing retaliatory tariff. In doing that, Mr. Trump was saying, I am going to whack every country, some more, some less. I'm not going to sit down and negotiate with them. I'm going to hit them. Then I'm going to say, if you'd like me to hit you a little less hard, lower the tariff, then we can sit down to negotiate. That's not how you work with other countries. You don't whack em and then decide to negotiate. You negotiate in the hopes of working out a mutual compromise on both sides kind of agreement. Mr. Trump didn't do that. He hit everybody. And you know what? He made enemies left, right and center. You may just be reading about Mr. Carney in Canada who spoke his enmity, but every leader, Starmer in England, Macron in France, Mertz in Germany, and I could go on, they're all angry, they're all bitter. They've all had their economic situations worsened by the unilateral action of one president who's trying to solve his problems and his country's problems at everybody else's expense. And if you think the whole rest of the world is all going to roll over and do what they're told, you are badly mistaken. Remember one statistic, never forget it. The United states population is 4.5% of the world's. The vast majority, 95.5% of the people of the world, are not Americans. And they are not going to permit the United States to run roughshod across them in a hundred ways, many of which we don't even know yet. They are working around underneath evading everything Mr. Trump is doing. That's why he was so bitter, because the Supreme Court in his brain is just another enemy. And he whacked them verbally because he can't do much else. To them, it's a failed program of a failed presidency, and we are living in those results. Stay with us. We'll be right back to talk about authoritarianism and whether it's true or not that the country is moving in that direction. Before we jump into the second half of today's show, I wanted to thank you for your very generous response to our fundraising efforts this year and in particular in the last couple of months. And in part responding to that, we are extending the availability of our limited edition linen covered hardcover version of Understanding Capitalism, the book I wrote and that we have been making available now for quite a while. If you are interested, I will be signing copies of that hardcover and they will be available to you as they have been over the last few weeks. Just simply send an email to us@infodemocracyatwork.info and put in the subject line limited edition. We will send you all the information you need to order and receive your copy signed copy of Understanding Capitalism in its hardback. And thank you again for your kind attention to the fundraising dimension of what we do. Welcome back, friends, to the second half of today's Economic update. This second half is devoted to to an analysis of something we hear these days in our mass media over and over again, that somehow we are a democracy with my air quotes, but that our democracy is in some way threatened or in decline and is being replaced by authoritarianism, presented as kind of the absence of democracy. I want to argue against that. I want to argue that we are not going from democracy to authoritarianism. But when I give you my reason, it may come as a surprise, and I want to take a few minutes to show you why. I think it's quite reasonable. So here we go. We're not passing from democracy to authoritarianism because we never had democracy. We wished we had was. The official mythology that we had was what we pledged allegiance to. You know, like one nation under God with liberty and justice for all. But we know very well that liberty and justice for all is an ideal, not a reality. Democracy is the same thing. Let's remember, democracy is an idea that if you are affected by a decision, then you have the right to participate in that decision pretty much on an equal par with everybody else. So let me begin by suggesting to you that we don't have that. And I think I can show it to you and I can explain to you why. Let's start with our political system. For a century or more, we have had basically two political parties in the United States, the Republicans and the Democrats. They have owned and operated the government pretty much at the federal level and pretty much in each of the 50 states and in our communities. In many parts of the country, no other political parties exist. Where they exist, they are small and in any case without significant influence. And the two parties have done a lot of work, the Republicans and the Democrats, to keep it that way, to make it as difficult as possible for anyone to break into their what, their authority? Oh, yes, mostly in very polite ceremonies every few years, the Republicans hand over the government to the Democrats, and then a few years later, vice versa. We even have large numbers of politicians who move easily from one party to another and often do it in their own lifetimes more than once. We have lots of people who vote this way one time, the other way the other time. It doesn't take much to move them because there isn't all that big a difference between them. In case you're wondering of examples, let's take a few. Immigration became an issue a few years ago, even though the United States is a country of immigrants. Since we killed off the native people over two centuries early on, it's a nation of immigrants. But it decided it didn't want immigrants. Who decided that? Two or three presidents and the Congresses dominated by the Republican and Democratic Party. Obama expelled immigrants. Biden expelled immigrants. Trump is eager to outdo them in expelling immigrants. That was an authoritative decision. We never had a referendum in America. We never had a chance for everybody to weigh in. Not at all. That's not a Democratic decision. Here's another one became really obvious last the Biden administration funds and arms Israel in the Gaza horror. So did the Trump administration. Republicans and Democrats agree on that one. At least the party leaders do. And that's what we have, what they want. It's not at all clear that the majority of Americans support what is being done by Israel in Gaza. There's good reason to believe that that half or more of our people don't. It doesn't matter. The authorities decide. The United States is often proud that its foreign policy is, get ready, bipartisan. What does that mean? It just means that the Republicans and Democrats together make those decisions, have those perspectives. Wow. So what is this story about democracy? Half our people don't vote, don't participate at all. And when you ask them why they don't, they answer, pretty much it doesn't matter to us. And they're right, of course. Are there differences between the parties? Of course there are. But not enough for these people to be all that concerned. And that's not because they are remiss in their democratic commitment. It's because they know from their own life experience what I know from mine. And I was born and raised in the United States. We don't have a democracy. We never did. But let me get at this in a yet more profound way. At the core of our society, we are all dependent on food, clothing and shelter. Those are the basics of life. Without those, most of the rest of it doesn't much matter. How do we provide ourselves as, as a community with Food, clothing and shelter. We work. Most of us go to work five days a week, Monday to Friday, as you know. And we use our brains and our muscles to help provide and make goods and services, the very ones we then buy at the store and, and used to secure food, clothing, shelter, education, healthcare, transportation and all the other enjoyments of life. So the question I want you to think about with me is how do we organize the production of goods and services? And the answer is in an extremely get ready, authoritarian way. Not democratic at all. Here's what I mean. When you come to work in the morning, you cross the threshold, you open the door from the street to go into the factory or the office or the store. You enter a place in which democracy is excluded. You have a boss, the owner of the enterprise, the executives chosen and hired by the owner, the board of directors selected by the shareholders, who are the owners of the business. Right. The employer, let's call them. The U.S. census, as I've told you many times, says that 3% of Americans are employers. That's including people who employ themselves, the self employed people. The vast majority of Americans are not employers. But if you go into a business and you're an employee, which is what most of us are, we are under the control, under the authority of the owner of the business. And if we don't like how we're treated, you know what we can do? Quit. And if we quit, we're going to have to find another employer who will have the same authority over us as the one we left, may act it out differently, may be a real nice guy, but the authority isn't in question. That's why we're an authoritarian society. Because our system, our economic system, our capitalist economic system is fundamentally authoritarian. It organizes every workplace with a tiny number of people at the top who have the authority. The employer fires you, not the other way around. The employer can get you to behave the way he wants by withdrawing your income, plunging you and your family into the resulting disaster. You can't do that to him. He's wealthy. That's what employers are there to do. He can survive your quitting, but by getting another poor soul in your place. There's always poor souls in your place, if they need to be. We have an authoritarian economic system and we always have. That's what capitalism is. Is there an alternative? Of course there is. We talk about it on this program. A democratic workplace. How would that work? All the people at the workplace, one person, one votewe decide majority rules, what to produce, how to produce, where to produce and what to do with the fruits of the work we all help do. That would be a democratic enterprise that exists. We call them worker co ops. They exist in the United States and they exist around the world. Is there an option to authoritarianism? Of course there is. Could we have a democratic society? Of course we could. We seem to want one. We seem to embrace one. We're so taken with the idea, we give it to ourselves, even though we know, don't we, that it isn't true. We're not in a transition from democracy to authoritarianism. We're in a transition from a nice authoritarianism that goes through the motions. We have votes and we have elections and we have debates, but now we're going to a nasty authoritarianism. We have a president who doesn't believe in talking and working things out. He likes to whack you with a tariff or whack you in some other way. We are going from nice, friendly authoritarianism to a nastier kind, and that's unpleasant. I agree with people noticing that that's not a direction they want to go. But let's be honest. If we really care about democracy versus authoritarianism, then our problems go way beyond criticizing Mr. Trump in the hopes that we get, I don't know, Gavin Newsom. Come on. That's not a movement from authoritarian to democracy. And calling ourselves a democracy doesn't make it happen. Either we are or we aren't. And I think, as I've shown you, starting with our basic economic system, we aren't. And maybe that's the problem we ought to be focused on. Thank you for your attention. I hope, as always, that these kinds of presentations are provocative in the good sense, making people think about important issues. And in any case, I look forward to speaking with you again next week.