“This is all just a con,” said Melinda St. Louis of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch. “[Trump] successfully used the real anger that people have about the status quo free-trade regime to claim he was upending things, when in fact we are seeing him double down on this corporate-rigged trade model.”
https://prospect.org/economy/2025-08-04-trumps-tariffs-kleptocracy-in-action/