Why Trump’s Tariffs Won’t Stop AI From Taking American Jobs
Hello, Reader.
Tom Yeung here with today’s Smart Money.
Last Saturday, Donald Trump did what he does best – steal the headlines. The news cycle was fixated on DeepSeek-R1, a cheap yet powerful AI model developed in China that rivals the best products from OpenAI and Google.
Within hours, the conversation shifted.
Suddenly, the focus was no longer on AI’s economic disruption but on Trump’s proposed tariffs – a plan to impose a 25% tax on all imports from Canada and Mexico and a 10% tax on Chinese goods. The “official” reason for the tariffs was to protect America from illegal immigration and fentanyl, but the real motivation was to raise tax revenues, bring back American manufacturing, and protect U.S. jobs.
Perhaps the tariffs (if ever fully enacted) will succeed at the first two tasks. They could bring in significant tax revenues… and might even help “reshore” some higher-end manufacturing jobs.
However, for the 80% of Americans who work in service jobs, the real threat to employment isn’t coming from cheap imported goods.
It’s coming from innovations like DeepSeek-R1.
That’s because AI doesn’t need factories, warehouses, or foreign labor. It only needs computing power. And right now, AI is advancing at a rate that makes tariffs look like a medieval tool in a modern economy. Millions of jobs will be replaced by AI in the coming decade, and import taxes can’t do a thing about it.
To help you prepare for this inevitable future, I urge you to watch Eric’s latest presentation, 1,000 Days to AGI. In it, he outlines how super-intelligent AI is coming for American jobs, and how you can prepare financially for this future. In the meantime, I’m going to spend a few minutes helping you to prepare as well.
