The idea that tariffs are bad is so deeply ingrained, saying anything else sounds absurd. We are so bought into the dominant narrative that we don’t question this. Yet tariffs might just be what help create regenerative futures inspired by Nature.
I am not saying that Trump’s blanket tariffs make any sense or are designed to respond to climate breakdown. Of course not.
The dominant narrative spins the trope of globalization and free trade as the road to prosperity. It’s almost unimaginable to suggest otherwise. Any hint at protectionism is considered hyper-nationalism or crypto-fascism.
Even maybe a threat to world peace. Free trade has become sacrosanct and is no longer debated in major media and thus in most conversations. This silence serves profit, not the planet.
Yet transforming how free trade shapes our relationships with the production-transportation-consumption cycle is key to creating regenerative futures.
Nature doesn’t produce in one place, pollute to transport, and generate waste halfway around the world.
But that’s what free trade does and we participate in the process. This is the behavior globalists would have us believe will help peoples rise out of poverty. Never mind the costs to the natural world.
We are all poorer when climate breaks down. We are all poorer without our other-than-human kin, who are experiencing the greatest mass extinction in 65 million years. We are all poorer when we feed our souls shopping for things we don’t need (if we are lucky enough have disposable income).
Regenerative futures call for localized production-transportation-consumption-and production anew after our consumption. We participate in this cycle with place and the more-than-human world with which we share it. This cycle breathes life, not consumption. Just because a product fits into the circular economy doesn’t mean you’re being regenerative. A TV that creates no waste might still pollute us with brain rot.
Regenerative futures will require an ecological tax on the harm production-transportation-consumption carries out on the natural world. We may not call these tariffs, but they are intended to protect and to dissuade free trade globally. These taxes will be plowed back into socio-environmental initiatives to offset the environmental costs of transportation and production.
Regenerative futures will require we organize locally, bioregionally. I am not suggesting we cut ourselves off from the rest of the world. It will just have to be a different way of interacting with other bioregions.
Regenerative futures will require we take into account costs to the natural world, not just our pocket books. When tanking markets spark more panic than ten straight years of record heat or an Earth Overshoot Day landing in July, we have a perception problem.
Regeneration asks us not only what we produce and how we consume, but why we trade at all, and for whose benefits.
So no, I am not defending Trump’s cynical and thoughtlessly imposed tariffs.
I am, however, deeply concerned with how the dominant narrative has marginalized, even weaponized, calls to restrict free trade.
I am wondering how we might change the narrative of protectionism away from trade, toward the natural world.
Regenerative futures cannot be created using the same free trade thinking that got us in this mess. They require different questions, different values and a different story of what it means to protect.
Coconut Thinking 