President Donald Trump stepped into month three of the Best Presidency Ever™ by implementing tariffs of at least 10% across all countries, kicking off trade wars with countries who make a healthy amount of things you probably take for granted: That coffee you drink in the morning? From Colombia. That iPhone (or, God forbid, Samsung) you’re using to read this? From China. All that stuff would be tariffed. (Is that a word? If not, I just created it.)
Corporations could eat the cost of importing these things we need (Because, let’s be honest, we need that coffee in the morning and what even is life without an iPhone?), but they won’t. They will pass that on to you resulting in the price of everything going up. As of this writing, Trump paused some of the country-specific tariffs (at least temporarily) because, he claims, he didn’t like hearing Americans not worth at least seven figures bitch about paying $100,000 for an American-made iPhone.
But while all Americans will feel a negative impact from the tariffs, recognize that the biggest victims of America’s trade war will be Black people. The cost of our overpriced Starbucks lattes going up is nothing compared to how these tariffs will impact Black people who are already in a vulnerable position.
Black unemployment is already highest in the US at 6%. And we all know that when businesses look for ways to downsize, we are always the first to go. That will result in a much higher Black unemployment rate. But let’s go deeper.
In 2023, over 17% of people who look like us lived below the poverty line. That’s more than double the rate of white folks. In that In that same year, one in four Black kids did not have reliable access to food, meaning that there are probably kids in your family who go to sleep hungry.
Virtually everything we buy is imported from somewhere else. I work on a college campus, and I can’t have a conversation with the beautiful Black students I walk past daily because they are all wearing headphones. The price of those things will go up.
Same with the computers we use at home, the cars we use to get to work, and even Madea’s medicine for her “suga” (diabetes). All that stuff is imported, so the cost to get them will increase. That means corporations will have to make hard choices about who to hire and fire...and, again, Black folks are already drawing the short straw in employment.
If Trump runs these tariffs back in their entirety, it might be time for Black folks to start looking at that Ghana citizenship.