Self-described “MAGA leftist” journalist and author Batya Ungar-Sargon is predicting President Donald Trump‘s tariff war will result in major wins for the United States, especially for the American working class.
According to Ungar-Sargon, the debate over tariffs traces back to the fallout from NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) implemented in 1994 and the decades-long off-shoring of manufacturing to China.
“We basically took all of these good middle-class jobs and shipped them overseas to build up China and Mexico’s middle class, and it resulted in the decimation of the Rust Belt, the decimation of working-class communities, deaths of despair, the whole fentanyl crisis,” Ungar-Sargon told Fox News Digital in an interview.
“I mean, all of this stuff stems from the degradation of masculinity and men as providers and as you know, in these factories, which were the center of their communities. I mean, the downstream effects of that, the atomization of Americans, is horrible.”
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Ungar-Sargon had a spirited debate earlier this month with “Real Time” host Bill Maher, who was perplexed by the Trump administration’s efforts to bring back manufacturing jobs, insisting “that ship has sailed.”
“That ship has not sailed,” Ungar-Sargon said in the interview. “All of that manufacturing is still being done. It’s just being done in other countries and building up their middle class.”
“And President Trump is the first person in, you know, 40 years, 30 years to say, ‘Well, why don’t we- we all know what the problem is- why don’t we try and fix it?” she continued.
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The “Second Class” author pointed to the early results of Trump’s tariff strategy like the trillion dollars in investments being made by various manufacturers in recent weeks, as well as pushing Mexico and Canada to crack down on border crossings and policing the transfer of fentanyl.
“It’s going to stop this, what has been our economy for the last 50 years, which was an upward funnel of wealth from the pockets of working-class Americans into the pockets of the elites,” Ungar-Sargon said. “What he wants to do is make working-class labor once again competitive, both domestically and in the global marketplace, and it’s just a great mechanism for it.”
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She conceded that the tariffs were being rolled out “a little bit chaotically,” saying that element of Trump’s strategy is “not great,” but stressed the long-term impact will be “absolutely huge.”
“Trump can’t stand when the U.S. is treated like a patsy. And that’s basically what we have. We have a whole bunch of countries that have massive tariffs on us, and we don’t have tariffs on them. It’s just not fair, and it’s not right. And it is disrespectful to our working class,” Ungar-Sargon said. “And I think Trump is trying to bring back, not just respect and dignity to the working class, but the romance of the American working class in order to reverse this trend of men just dropping out of the workforce, dropping out of life, not being able to get married and start families and, you know, all of that great stuff.”
Fox News’ Nikolas Lanum contributed to this report.
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