The president won by appealing to strivers, hoping to get rich. His tariffs now threaten that support.
In a February interview, Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona observed that when talking with Latino men on the campaign trail, he had been struck by their emphasis on earning money as a source of pride. As he put it in underscoring the point, “Every Latino man wants a big-ass truck.” What more perfect emblem is there for making it in the America of 2025? Now imagine how those young men Gallego spoke with might be reacting to the prospect of paying $10,000 to $12,000 more for the big-ass truck of their dreams.
President Donald Trump’s newly imposed tariff regime sent the market into free fall, wiping away trillions of dollars in a matter of days. Administration officials have largely dismissed the decline; Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, for example, labeled it a “short-term” reaction. Others have bristled at the idea of caring about a drop in the market: Senator Eric Schmitt responded to the financial panic by saying, “America isn’t an economic zone. America isn’t a strip mall with an airport attached to it. America is a place. It’s our home. It’s our people.”
Continue reading the entire piece here at The Atlantic (paywall)
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Reihan Salam is the president of the Manhattan Institute. Follow him on Twitter here. Charles Fain Lehman is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal
Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
