Trump's Tariffs Mirror Those of Hitler

Some say that comparisons of the Felon and Adolph Hitler are overblown or even hysterical, yet watching the Felon's efforts to undermine the rule of law, endless lies, attacks of the media outlets and individuals that publish and speak the truth, and willingness to abrogate civil rights, bear uncanny similarities with the actions and policies of Hitler in the early 1930's.  Add in Hitler's claims to justify seizing parts of neighboring nations (the need for resources and space) which sound like the Felon's demands that Denmark hand over Greenland to America and the parallels become even more stark.  Lastly the Felon's tariffs and trade war track those of Hitler - he argued Germany needed German workers and farmers producing German goods for German consumers. . . . “import restrictions” as key to returning the German economy to the Germans - who like the Felon had inherited a recovering economy.  Like what Americans now face, Hitler's tariffs raised prices and sparked a trade war.   The last parallel is the Felon's appointment of cabinet secretaries and others who are first loyal to him, with actual competence and expertise falling by the way side.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at Hitler's tariffs which are so much like what Americans now face:

From almost the moment Adolf Hitler took office as chancellor of Germany, tariffs were at the top of his government’s economic agenda. . . . . Hitler had what one might call a diffident, occasionally felonious disregard for financial matters. He owed 400,000 reichsmarks in back taxes. His understanding of economics was primitive. “You have inflation only if you want it,” Hitler once said. “Inflation is a lack of discipline. I will see to it that prices remain stable. I have my S.A. for that.” (The S.A., or Brownshirts, were the original paramilitary organization associated with the Nazi Party.) Hitler held Jews responsible for most of Germany’s financial woes.

Hitler relied on Gottfried Feder, the National Socialist Party’s long-serving chief economist, to develop the specifics of an economic program. Feder had helped concoct the strange brew of socialism and fanatical nationalism in the original 25-point program of this putative “workers’ party.” In May 1932, Feder outlined what would become the first Nazi economic plan. High on Feder’s agenda for a Hitler economy were tariffs.

“National Socialism demands that the needs of German workers no longer be supplied by Soviet slaves, Chinese coolies, and Negroes,” Feder wrote. Germany needed German workers and farmers producing German goods for German consumers. Feder saw “import restrictions” as key to returning the German economy to the Germans. “National Socialism opposes the liberal world economy, as well as the Marxist world economy,” Feder wrote. Our fellow Germans must “be protected from foreign competition.” . . . . Feder’s tariffs fit into Hitler’s larger vision for “liberating” the German people from the shackles of a globalized world order.

The crash of 1929 had plunged Germany, along with much of the rest of the world, into an abyss. Markets collapsed. Factories were idled. Unemployment soared. In the early 1930s, one out of three German workers was unemployed. But Hitler had inherited a recovering economy: In December 1932, the German Institute for Economic Research reported that the crisis had been “significantly overcome”; by the time Hitler was appointed chancellor, in January 1933, the economy was on the mend.

Thus Hitler’s main economic task as chancellor was not to mess things up. The German stock market had rallied on news of his coming to power. . . . . But rumors of potential tariffs and the abrogation of international agreements, along with Hitler’s challenges to the constitutional order, sent alarm bells clanging. The conservative Centre Party warned Hitler against “unconstitutional, economically harmful, socially reactionary and currency endangering experiments.”

If one were to “strangle” trade through tariffs, it would endanger German industrial production—which, in turn, would inflict severe self-harm on the German economy, and lead to increased unemployment. “Exporting German goods provides three million workers with jobs,” Hamm wrote. The last thing Germany’s recovering but still-fragile economy needed was a trade war. Hamm urged Hitler to exercise “greatest caution” in his tariff policies.

But Hitler made no effort to reassure the markets, insisting that the tariffs were necessary and that he needed time to fix the ruined country his predecessors had left him. . . . . Hitler provided scant details as to how this was to be accomplished. . . . . But although the average voter may not have cared about the details of the Hitler economy, the markets did. The initial surge in stocks that greeted Hitler’s appointment halted then dipped and flattened amid the political and economic uncertainty of Hitler’s chaotic first weeks as chancellor.

Hans Joachim von Rohr, who worked at the Reich’s nutrition ministry, went on national radio to explain the logic of Hitler’s tariff strategy. “The products that Germany lacks must be made more expensive; then farmers will produce them in sufficient quantities,” Rohr explained. “And if foreign competition is kept at bay by tariffs and the like, city residents will prefer domestic production.” . . . . Hitler’s proposed “national economy,” with its self-defeating tariff policies, would plunge the country into a “severe crisis” that could cost hundreds of thousands of jobs. And that was even before any damage wreaked by retaliatory tariffs.

The Hitler tariffs, announced on Friday, February 10, 1933, stunned observers. “The dimension of the tariff increases have in fact exceeded all expectations,” the Vossische Zeitung wrote disapprovingly, proclaiming the moment a “fork in the road” for the German economy. It appeared that Europe’s largest and most industrialized nation would suddenly be returning “to the furrow and the plow.” The New York Times saw this for what it was: “a trade war” against its European neighbors.

The primary targets of the Hitler tariffs—the Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands—were outraged by the sudden suspension of favored-nation trading status on virtually all agricultural products, as well as on textiles, with tariffs in some cases rising 500 percent. With its livestock essentially banished from the German market, Denmark, for example, was facing substantial losses. Farmers panicked. The Danes and Swedes threatened “retaliatory measures,” as did the Dutch, who warned the Germans that the countermeasures would be felt as “palpable blows” to German industrial exports. That proved to be true.

In his address, Hitler declared that the entire country needed to be rebuilt after years of mismanagement by previous governments. He spoke of the “sheer madness” of international obligations imposed by the Treaty of Versailles, of the need to restore “life, liberty, and happiness” to the German people, of the need for “cleansing” the bureaucracy, public life, culture, the population, “every aspect of our life.” His tariff regime, he implied, would help restore the pride and honor of German self-reliance.

Hitler did not refer specifically to the trade war he had launched that afternoon, just as he did not mention the rearmament plans he had discussed with his cabinet the previous day. “Billions of reichsmarks are needed for rearmament,” Hitler had told his ministers in that meeting. “The future of Germany depends solely and exclusively on the rebuilding of the army.” Hitler’s trade war with his neighbors would prove to be but a prelude to his shooting war with the world.