Remember in 1996 when Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer advanced Donald Trump’s trade and tariffs policies and strategies to address trade imbalances? What so concerned Pelosi and Schumer at the team were the same unfair trade practices (especially with regards to China) that concerns Trump and the MAGA movement—and should concern every person who says he cares about working people.
See above Pelosi’s 1996 House floor speech where the congresswoman criticizes the trade relationship with China, highlighting the stark tariff disparity. She brings the receipts: US tariffs on Chinese goods averaged around two percent while China imposed tariffs averaging 35 percent on US goods. She notes that this imbalance is a big part of the reason for the growing trade deficit—projected to exceed 40 billion dollars that year (today, it is more than three times that amount in adjusted dollars). Pelosi claims that this has resulted in significant job losses, with China gaining at least 10 million jobs from the dynamic. She is right. And it has only gotten worse. In her speech, Pelosi even opposes granting China Most Favored Nation (MFN) status (now known as Permanent Normal Trade Relations, or PNTR). Yet China does enjoy MFN status.
As I pointed out in my last article on Freedom and Reason (see With Reciprocal Tariffs, Trump Triggers the Globalists), Democrats have historically been the party of world capitalism. Yet, here Pelosi is telling the truth about the problem of trade deficits. And she isn’t the only one. Schumer has also critical of free trade in the past. He praised Biden’s tariffs in 2024, saying “Today, President Biden announced he is taking new steps to protect US workers and put the Chinese Communist Party on notice with a new round of tariffs on goods vital for America’s economic future.” He is quoted by an X user (@The_Only_Kee) as saying as recently as this year: “China’s manipulating its currency and piling on tariffs against our goods—it’s a rigged game. We need tariffs to level the playing field, or we’re just handing our economic future over to them. They’re exploiting our openness, and it’s got to stop.” I have not verified this quote, but I do remember when Schumer told Trump in 2019 to “hang tough” on China tariffs.
Schumer also advanced the cause of fighting fraud in America, especially the problem of illegal aliens exploiting the Social Security card to take jobs from American workers. In the above clip from 1996, Schumer speaks on the House floor in favor of an amendment to address Social Security fraud in the context of illegal immigration. The legislation in question is the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA), which Bill Clinton signed into law in September of that year. Schumer’s argument that the availability of Social Security benefits incentivizes illegal immigration due to lax enforcement and fraud resonates with statements made by Antonio Gracias at Elon Musk’s recent town hall in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Gracias has been widely panned for his presentation. You have to hunt for Schumer’s speech (which I was unaware of until today when I found it accidentally).
Trump’s economic strategy uses tariffs to address trade deficits, protect domestic industries, and pressure other nations into reciprocal trade terms. This is the American System—the original operating system of the United States (again, see my yesterday’s article). Schumer and Pelosi’s critiques of trade imbalances and calls for corrective action shared a common thread with Trump’s approach—prioritizing American economic sovereignty over globalism. Schumer’s support for an anti-fraud amendment in the context of combating the knock-on effects of illegal immigration also resonates with Trump’s emphasis on controlling the border—again, to protect the interests of the American working class.
So what the happened to these Democrats? Pelosi is now criticizing Trump’s tariffs as “reckless” and a “tax hike” on Americans, arguing they’ll raise consumer prices and hurt families. But hasn’t it always been true that tariffs raise prices? In the above video clip, Schumer decries the tariffs as a burden on consumers (note his “populist” attack on billionaires, keeping in mind that the Democratic Party is the party of oligarchy). Did these progressives ever really mean to argue for tariffs? Or were they always just sheepdogs lying to keep working class Americans voting for Democrats—the original party of globalization?
Never forget things like this. You need to have a working memory of past statements in order to keep track of the way Democrats shift their positions on a dime when the oligarchy comes calling. We see the same thing with Bernie Sanders, who flipped on immigration (see here for video evidence), as well as on the problem of concentrated wealth and power in the pharmaceutical industry, which the public recently witnessed during the Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., confirmation hearing (before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions) in Sanders defending his campaign for having received approximately 1.4 million dollars from the pharmaceuticals sector, making him the top recipient among sitting members of Congress that year for contributions from the industry—all the while sheep-dogging for the Democratic Party during his “Fighting Oligarchy” campus tour (with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Tim Walz in tow).
History shows that Pelosi and Schumer publicly and passionately supported balancing trade through tariffs and protecting US jobs and businesses, their rhetoric paralleling that of the economic nationalism they condemn today. They were not wrong then. Not about this, at least. They are wrong now—wrong about almost everything.
The reality is that Democrats are no longer the party of the working class—if they ever were. “But Republicans are for capitalism!” I hear the objection from partisans. To be sure. But so are Democrats. That’s not the divide. America will never be a socialist country. The question is what kind of capitalism we will have. Will it be a transnational corporate capitalism that decimates the American working class and makes them dependent on big intrusive government rife with waste, fraud, and abuse? Or will it be a free market capitalism guided by economic nationalism that leverages the entrepreneurial spirit rooted in domestic industry to establish an economy where American workers will have a piece of the action while enjoying individual liberty and autonomy? Put simply: Will we have globalism? Or will we have the American System?
American workers didn’t really have a good political option before 2016. They do now. For decades, the progressive Democrat philosophy—neoconservatism, neoliberalism, and administrative management of populations—dominated American policy, with the Republican Party playing the part of the controlled opposition. Occasionally bones would be thrown to the public, but by and large the direction was one that undermined the interests of working class families for the sake of those of the transnational corporate elite. But Trump and the populist movement shattered the Uniparty.
The proof that Trump is on the side of economic freedom and worker interests and not only concerned with the interests of the billionaires is found in his trade and immigration policies, policies that are vigorously opposed by the establishment. The rational man does not toe the partisan political line. “Blue no matter who” and other slogans frankly express a form of stupidity. The rational man works from first principles and supports leaders and parties that represent those principles. One has to be prepared to stand for something rather than going with the flow. These are bourgeois parties. One cannot be loyal to such a thing and at the same time maintain his class commitments.
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