Welcome to Confronting Capitalism. I'm Melissa Nashek, and I'm here, as always, with Vecbber,

a professor at NYU and the editor of Catalyst, a journal of theory and strategy. How are you doing

today, V? I'm doing very well, Melissa. Thank you. Today, we're going to talk about tariffs. So, as of

recording, Trump has instituted three

major tariffs through executive order on Mexico, Canada, and China. Already, he has put a one-month

pause on the tariffs from Mexico and Canada. and the reasons for that cited by all three

leaders is that the US has come to agreements with both Canada and Mexico that they're

going to increase security measures on the border that the US shares with each respective

country in order to control the illegal flow of fentanyl into the U.S. shares with each respective country in order to control the illegal

flow of fentanyl into the U.S. The tariffs that Trump has placed on China have not been paused,

and so already in response to those tariffs, China has instituted its own retaliatory tariffs on the U.S.

So it kind of looks like we're heading into a trade war.

Do you think that we, the left, the working class, need we worry about this?

Potentially, yeah.

I think there's a lot at stake here, Melissa, and I think it is important for us to try to get our minds around it.

I thought it would be good for us to maybe start how we normally start getting the definitional question out of the way,

just to make sure that we're on the same page with the listeners.

So, Vec, can you kind of explain what tariffs are and talk a little bit about how they're used by capitalist states?

At its most basic level, a tariff is just a way of raising the price of imports.

Imports are goods from other countries that are coming into your country.

It essentially allows the government to put a tax on each one of those goods

so that the importer is paying a higher price to bring it

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