If Trump’s tariffs are so ‘beautiful,’ why keep them a secret? | Opinion
Donald Trump really, really doesn’t want you to know how much his tariffs are going to cost you.
Apparently, that is top-secret information — so much so that the president had a fit last week when he thought Amazon was going to spill the beans by letting customers know exactly how much of their hard-earned cash would be spent on those “beautiful” tariffs.
Punchbowl News was the first to report that Amazon planned to “display how much of an item’s cost is derived from tariffs — right next to the product’s total listed price.”
The response was swift.
“This is a hostile and political act by Amazon,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt complained to the press. “Why didn’t Amazon do this when the Biden administration hiked inflation to the highest level in 40 years?”
Trump even phoned Jeff Bezos in a huff, but calmed down when he was assured that Amazon would do no such thing.
According to Amazon, the idea had been discussed but never approved — and probably never will be, unless Bezos grows a backbone and stands up to Trump.
Shouldn’t we have the right to know?
In the interest of transparency, we should know about any government “add-on” that increases costs for consumers. It works that way for sales tax, for example. Also for bed tax. Heck, when we buy a new tire, we’re told we’ll have to pay a state-mandated $1.75 disposal fee to get rid of the old one.
But in Trump world, apparently the less said the better; the administration regards it as un-American for U.S. companies to be up-front about how much tariffs are adding to their customers’ bills.
That’s unfortunate, because for all that talk about tariffs, they remain something of a mystery. We know the percentage of the various tariffs that Trump has imposed, but that’s been changing so often and there are so many exceptions that it’s hard to keep up.
Unless it’s spelled out, how are we supposed to figure out the tariff on a toaster or a barbecue or one of those dolls that Trump has been talking about lately?
Consider, too, that full disclosure could be a boon for American manufacturers. If we know an item’s price has been jacked up by, say, $212 on account of tariffs, wouldn’t that inspire us to look for an alternative that’s made (or mostly made) in America? And isn’t that what Trump wants?
Also, think of what this means for merchants. We might be less inclined to blame them for price gouging, and more inclined to blame Trump, which helps explain why the president wants us kept in the dark — especially after all his talk about how tariffs would not affect us.
“It’s not going to be a cost to you. It’s going to be a cost to another country,” he said during his campaign. “I’m not raising your taxes. I’m raising China and all of these other countries in Asia and all over the world, including the European Union, by the way, which is one of the most egregious.”
Tariffs do work like taxes
Now he’s trying to walk that back by claiming that he warned us all along that there would be hard times ahead.
“I said all of these things during my campaign,” he told CNN in a recent interview. “I said, ‘You’re gonna have a transition period.’” (Actually, he didn’t, according to multiple fact checks.)
But at last, the president has come clean. Tariffs really do work like taxes, in that we’ll get stuck paying more for just about everything. Yet our dystopian reality is such that retailers risk being branded “hostile” if they have the audacity to tell us that the pair of shoes that used to cost $79 online are now more than twice that due to tariffs.
And good luck trying to escape that tariff by finding a pair made in the U.S.A. — 99% of the shoes sold here are imported, mostly from China.
But here’s a thought: You might want to check out shoes made in Italy, since the tariff on Italian goods is just 10%. You’d better hurry, though. That’s supposed to go up to 20% on July 8, unless there’s been a change.
This story was originally published May 4, 2025 at 5:00 AM with the headline "If Trump’s tariffs are so ‘beautiful,’ why keep them a secret? | Opinion."
