When a news site tells us, “While tariffs and their effects on the economy are largely out of our control, consumers can prepare for tariff-driven cost increases by monitoring changes and applying simple budgeting strategies,” we should see the red flag.
Tariffs are not natural disasters, and they are not outside our control. They are political decisions, and they can be challenged.
To frame them as inevitable and reduce our role to better budgeting is propaganda meant to distract, demobilize, and disenfranchise.
The real response is not to assume this problem is an individual responsibility but to recognize tariffs as deliberate choices that benefit corporations while ordinary people are told to bear the costs. In other words, what’s needed is not better personal budgeting, but collective action.
So when we are told that “adding a small buffer to your budget, substituting products, or timing purchases around scheduled tariff changes can keep you from burning a hole in your wallet,” this is not neutral advice. It is selling resignation.
Worse, it suppresses organization by channeling frustration away from solidarity and toward quiet self-management.
The real task is not to quietly absorb the blow, but to demand accountability and resist the normalization of policies that serve profits at the expense of people. News outlets should do their job: depict the issue as it truly is, not bait and switch to appear helpful.
The truth is outrageous. By reframing outrage into resignation, they are serving the interests of corporations and the wealthy.
Don’t let it work.