President Donald Trump’s trade wars with Canada and Europe, traditionally among the United States’ closest allies, have raised prices for American workers, weakened job security, damaged the country’s standing abroad and contributed to a political culture marked by corruption, according to Dr. Elizabeth McKillen, professor emerita of history at the University of Maine.

Economist Dr. Ed Gresser has described the trade conflicts as “weird,” but McKillen’s assessment is more severe. She argues that Trump’s protectionist policies are reversing generations of American diplomacy and international cooperation while reviving economic strategies associated with the 1930s, when protectionism arguably deepened the Great Depression. That era remains defined in trade history by the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, which raised U.S. duties on thousands of imported goods and prompted retaliatory measures from trading partners.

The interview was conducted by AlterNet’s Rozsa and has been lightly edited for accuracy, clarity, context and length. McKillen specializes in U.S. history, labor history and foreign policy history. She is the author of “Making the World Safe for Workers: Labor, the Left, and Wilsonian Internationalism” and “Chicago Labor and the Quest for a Democratic Diplomacy: 1914-1924.”

The article was published by AlterNet on September 24, 2026: https://www.alternet.org/alternet-exclusives/trump-loser-tariff/

How Trump has changed America’s role in the world

Rozsa: You have written about President Woodrow Wilson, whose philosophy of Wilsonianism promoted liberal democratic internationalism and sought to establish a world order based on national sovereignty, the rule of law and peace. How did Wilsonianism affect America’s standing worldwide, and how has Trumpism changed that role?

McKillen: Initially, Wilsonian internationalism was not especially influential because the U.S. Senate rejected the treaty associated with it and therefore rejected membership in the League of Nations. The United States also experienced strong isolationist sentiment during the 1930s and entered World War II slowly.

After World War II, however, the United States entered a period of free trade, assumed a kind of hegemonic role and worked with international organizations for a time. Trump has rejected that role on many levels. It would be inaccurate to say that he has rejected the idea of an influential United States altogether. Rather, he prefers to act more like a bully than to engage in international cooperation.

Trump has also rejected free trade and moved the country back toward protectionism, which flourished during the 1930s and arguably made the Depression much worse. Many people have therefore remained skeptical of tariffs as a way to restore American prosperity. The consequences of Trump’s approach have included alienation of U.S. allies around the world, including Canada, which was previously one of America’s closest trade partners.

Trump has also rejected elements of the postwar effort to reduce the gap between rich and poor, both domestically and internationally. During the post-World War II period, the United States showed interest in helping struggling economies. In Europe, that effort began with the Marshall Plan, which reflected concern about Europe’s recovery. Later, similar efforts were directed toward underdeveloped countries through USAID.

Those programs were not entirely altruistic. The United States recognized that its own economic well-being increasingly depended on a global market for American goods. During the Cold War, the country came to see assistance to struggling economies as necessary to maintaining its own economic growth.

Trump has largely rejected that approach as a form of charity and has argued that the United States should spend less on international economic development. That has created another point of conflict with European allies. The same attitude has applied to international health issues, including the question of how much the United States should help African countries confront diseases such as Ebola. Some of those funds were slashed, which is also problematic.

In that sense, Trump has said he returning to an “America First” strategy. But an America First strategy may not serve the United States well in a global economy. By the 1970s, much of the world had caught up economically with the United States. The country faced economic competition from Japan and Europe, raising the question of how the United States should respond.

Many American companies wanted to find the lowest-wage markets around the world. Labor organizations and other groups, however, argued that the United States needed to strengthen its domestic market and pay workers enough to afford American products. This contributed to an anti-Japanese revolt among parts of the labor movement during the 1970s. Workers objected to the widespread purchase of Japanese automobiles and wanted the American auto industry to remain strong.

How tariffs affect American workers

Rozsa: How are President Trump’s trade wars, particularly with Canada and the European Union, hurting American workers? I am asking about two issues: the effect of tariffs on prices and their effect on labor rights.

McKillen: Tariffs ultimately raise the prices workers pay for goods. That is because Trump’s claim during his election campaign that foreign countries pay tariffs was false. The first parties to pay are generally American businesses that purchase foreign goods. Those businesses then tend to pass the costs on to consumers.

That part of Trump’s argument was always untrue. I published material about it in the local press. Another argument initially proved more persuasive to American workers: the idea that tariffs would bring home American industries that had moved overseas.

The phenomenon of plants moving abroad was especially visible during the 1970s and 1980s, so workers initially accepted that argument. Shawn Fain of the United Auto Workers was one example. Although Fain had initially delivered a campaign speech for Kamala Harris, he later embraced Trump’s tariff approach.

But the approach did not work as promised. Factory jobs have actually declined because of the tariffs. One reason is that even American factories producing goods depend on foreign products and components. Tariffs raise the cost of those inputs, which in turn increases the price of the finished goods. Those effects hurt workers.

The relationship between the U.S. and Canadian auto industries provides a particularly clear example. The industries in the two countries are deeply intertwined, so tariffs imposed between them harm workers on both sides of the border.

Trump’s policies have also harmed workers through actions affecting unions and federal labor institutions. He has engaged in forms of union busting involving federal workers, who represent a significant portion of the population. He has also damaged the National Labor Relations Board, as he has done with other independent agencies, by firing the person in charge of the board.

Independent federal agencies need to remain independent, but Trump has compromised that independence. The National Labor Relations Board has been largely disempowered because he has not replaced the official he fired. Without a quorum — the minimum number of sitting members the board needs to conduct business — the board has been unable to function effectively.

Since the 1930s, the National Labor Relations Board, created by Congress through the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, has played an important role in protecting workers’ rights to organize and form unions. Its loss of capacity therefore affects workers’ rights directly.

Tariffs and America’s economic standing

Rozsa: The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled Trump’s tariffs illegal, yet he continues to impose them. How does that undermine America’s economic standing in the global community?

McKillen: It makes other countries feel insecure about their future relations with the United States. Economists say that uncertainty is among the worst outcomes. Even consistently high tariffs are preferable to not knowing what policies will be in place in the future.

Many people in the international community also recognize that tariffs hurt workers in every country involved. They harm workers in the United States as well as workers elsewhere.

There have been periods in the history of every country when some protectionism was necessary. In the United States, the strongest case was probably the period immediately after the American Revolution, when American industry lagged behind British industry and needed a limited number of protective tariffs.

That does not mean protective tariffs should never be used. They should be targeted and reciprocal. In McKillen’s view, Trump’s tariffs have not met those standards, regardless of his arguments. Instead, he has adopted the role of a global bully, which has generated widespread resentment.

McKillen also said Trump’s economic knowledge appears poor enough that foreign countries often make fun of him. In Canada, for example, a washroom was named after him. In Ireland, there is a statue depicting him sitting in a garbage can. Such episodes reflect either a striking lack of knowledge about basic economic principles or a perception that Trump is deliberately lying.

As a result, McKillen said, Trump is viewed abroad as something of a farce. She added that people outside the United States do not necessarily understand him or understand why Americans would vote for him.

Grover Cleveland and the “communism of pelf”

Rozsa: Democratic President Grover Cleveland warned against high tariffs. In 1894, he called them a “communism of pelf,” and in 1887 he described excessive tariffs as an “indefensible extortion” and a “culpable betrayal of American fairness and justice.” Do those descriptions still apply today?

McKillen: Cleveland’s descriptions are not entirely indefensible, although tariffs need to be targeted. Trump’s relationship with William McKinley is interesting in this context because Trump admires McKinley, who initially supported tariffs, as reflected in the McKinley Tariff of 1890 that bore his name.

The important point is that tariffs should be mutually agreed upon. As economies have become increasingly global, countries have found it more important to cooperate through international economic treaties than focus solely on nationalistic tariffs. Such tariffs are widely viewed as potentially contributing to war.

High tariffs did not help during the 1930s. The economic pain caused by tariffs, combined with the unfavorable settlement following World War I, helped provoke anger in Germany and contributed to the rise of German fascism.

Cleveland therefore had a point, but McKillen said she is not an advocate of completely unrestricted free trade. American workers became disillusioned with free trade during the Cold War because they eventually recognized its problems.

Some tariffs can be justified, but McKillen said Bernie Sanders has offered the strongest approach by arguing that tariffs should involve democratic input and be negotiated cooperatively with other countries. Sanders has also argued that labor rights should be a central concern and that labor should have a role in tariff negotiations. That would help protect workers’ rights in both countries when an agreement is bilateral.

One example is the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the successor to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which Trump signed during his first term after initially resorting to high tariffs. The agreement included a labor provision, a labor-rights charter and a monitoring system. McKillen said those mechanisms have not been used adequately since then and that she was unsure why.

Trade negotiations should include all significant actors, including labor, she said. Discussions should not be conducted solely from the perspective of business. Labor organizations and labor movements also need a voice.

The U.S. labor movement supported relatively free trade immediately after World War II and during the Cold War. It later became known for working with the CIA to overthrow foreign governments that practiced protectionism or followed more socialist policies, including the government of Salvador Allende in Chile.

Over time, however, the labor movement became disillusioned with that approach. The shift began particularly after the Cold War and was reflected in opposition to the World Trade Organization and similar institutions during the 1990s.

President Joe Biden also imposed tariffs, but McKillen said they were more targeted. Targeting is essential, she said, as is cooperation with allies.

She described Trump’s treatment of allies as another contradiction in his approach. His administration has imposed more aggressive tariffs on close partners such as Canada and Europe than on major powers such as China or countries that have historically been hostile to the United States.

After Cleveland, who strongly favored free trade, McKinley eventually moved toward a more focused approach. Following the depression of 1893, McKinley recognized that tariffs were not working and that the United States needed overseas markets. That approach contributed to empire and also encouraged the development of reciprocal trade agreements with other countries.

Tariffs and corruption

Rozsa: Returning to Cleveland’s description of excessive protectionist tariffs as a “communism of pelf,” I would argue that Trump is engaging in corruption through his tariff system by favoring industries close to the president while treating industries without those personal ties differently. In that sense, he is creating a form of communism based on pelf, an archaic term for greed. Do you agree, and what are the economic consequences for ordinary Americans?

McKillen: That is absolutely true with respect to Trump. His corruption is almost constant, and he has made billions from being president.

I am not sure, however, that “communism” is the correct term. Communism is complex. There have been democratic forms of communism as well as fanatical and dictatorial forms. I would not necessarily use the word in the same way Cleveland did.

But tariffs do lend themselves to presidential corruption. That was also true during Cleveland’s period, when many corporations worked directly with presidents to increase their own wealth, while the president did the same thing.

So tariffs can certainly facilitate Trump’s corruption, as they have in other historical periods.

Rozsa: How does that hurt ordinary Americans?

McKillen: It hurts them in the ways already discussed. Tariffs can artificially raise prices, while the resulting profits do not necessarily go toward building new factories or increasing workers’ wages.

Cartoons from the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, including work by socialists and other publications associated with the left press, often portrayed tariffs as serving big business and corruption at workers’ expense. Workers were depicted as becoming peasants again because higher prices consumed their wages while employers failed to pay them enough.

Those cartoons illustrate the broader concern surrounding a “communism of pelf”: a system in which government economic policy can concentrate wealth and influence among powerful corporations and politically connected interests rather than improving conditions for ordinary workers.