Commentary by Stephen Macaulay

So how has Trump made things better for the average American?

Wasn’t that the reason why many people voted for him, because he promised them a Golden Age?

It was that and his deporting illegal aliens, a cadre of people whom, if you listen to him, are all murders, rapists and drug-addicts/peddlers.

As Adrian Carrasquillo reports in the Huddled Masses newsletter, on March 26 representatives of the American Business Immigration Council had meetings with members of Congress. Carrasquillo quotes Matt Teagarden, CEO of the 5,600-member Kansas Livestock Association, which is likely not some radical group, saying, “We either import workers or we import our food.”

What seems to be overlooked in the discussion of undocumented people is that according to information from the American Immigration Council, a large percentage of them work in agriculture. And based on Teagarden’s comment, they work in meat-processing, too.

While it might seem from the rhetoric of Team Trump that these people are “taking Americans’ jobs,” according to the most-recent figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate in the US is 4.1%, which is essentially full employment.

Arguably there aren’t a whole lot of Americans available to take those jobs and the real question is how many of them would be willing to do that work.

When Trump was elected in November 2024 the Consumer Price Index — a gauge based on “a basket” of products people regularly buy — was at 2.7%. In February 2025, the CPI is 2.8%. Yes, a 0.1% increase, but not a 0.1% decrease.

This week there are supposed to be 25% tariffs on all vehicles imported to the US. Imports accounted for approximately 50% of all cars and trucks purchased by Americans in 2024.

So if 50% have an increased price (likely some percentage of 25%) and people suddenly buy the vehicles that aren’t imported, don’t the laws of supply and demand have it that those domestic products are going to get more expensive, too?  After all, a car dealer who sees increased interest in the non-tariffed cars isn’t going to simply sell them at sticker, as we saw during the COVID crisis.

Another thing that isn’t typically thought about — but will be — are those 25% tariffs that are applied to imported steel and aluminum. About 47% of the aluminum used in the US was imported. So given that, this means that things like beer cans are going to be getting more expensive.

And so will beer. According to the Beer Institute, about 18% of the beer consumed in the US is imported. Add tariff costs to that and. . . .

(Beer, incidentally, is an excellent case of why, despite what Team Trump says, other countries aren’t ripping off America. People just like the taste of Modelo, Heineken, Guinness, etc. So they buy it. No one is forcing them to drink it. Will making it more expensive make it taste any less good to them — or will it serve to drive up inflation?)

And then there are all of those DOGE activities that are (1) increasing the number of people unemployed (how is that good?) and (2) knee-capping the services that regular Americans depend on — like having someone at Social Security answer the phone.

Elon Musk may claim “waste, fraud and abuse” are rife.

But consider this: if you worked in an office, there was probably “that guy” who pilfered supplies. It wasn’t the whole staff. Just that guy. And you can pretty much be certain that whether it is a grocery store or any other product-based business you can think of, it is “that guy” who is doing dubious things, not everyone.

So why is it that literally thousands of people at various agencies are losing their jobs rather than “that guy”? Because it seems that Musk et. al. fail to understand that the US government is a service business and cutting services will reduce the amount of money spent but it will also reduce the purpose of the enterprise.

Isn’t answering a phone in a Social Security office “mission critical” when the mission is serving the people on the other end of the line?

Trump has intimated that before the wonders of tariffs kick in that Americans may “feel some pain.” The pain will be real. The wonders will be fanciful.

Macaulay is pundit-at-large for The Hustings, writing primarily for the right column.