Toward the end of the Biden administration, conservatives, fed up with the supposed imposition of liberal ideas by “woke capital,” tried to create what The Economist described as a “parallel economy” in which one could buy “anti-woke” versions of goods such as beer and razors. Those products might come at a premium, but if that was the price of your beliefs, you were free to pay it.
Now, in Donald Trump’s second administration, that parallel economy is just the economy. Trumpist culture wars have made almost everything more expensive, effectively forcing all Americans to pay an anti-woke tax. Although conservatives usually use woke to describe some form of egalitarianism they oppose, it’s proved such an effective epithet that they’re now applying the label to anything they need their constituents to dislike.
Tariffs are the most obvious example. An analysis by the Harvard Business School professor Alberto Cavallo noted that although inflation was trending downward before Trump’s tariffs took effect, “prices on both imported and domestic goods have climbed modestly but stead
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