The Trump administration says its new tariffs are aimed at combating forced labor. But the countries with the highest rates of modern slavery are largely exempt, while countries with the lowest rates are being hit with tariffs. So what are the tariffs really targeting?
Yeva Nersisyan is an associate professor of economics at Franklin and Marshall College. L. Randall Wray is a professor of economics at Bard College and senior scholar at the Levy Economics Institute
Driven by speculative finance, stagnant wages, and AI hype, today’s tech-heavy economy mirrors the fragile plutonomy that collapsed into the Great Crash of 1929.
