Within weeks of assuming the presidency, Donald Trump announced tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and China. It’s a centerpiece of a turn toward protectionism that the White House has touted as a way of supporting American workers.

In the latest episode of the Jacobin Radio podcast Confronting Capitalism, Catalyst editor Vivek Chibber and Jacobin contributor Melissa Naschek discuss how nineteenth and twentieth-century protectionist trade policies helped build domestic manufacturing bases around the world, but why Trump’s twenty-first century tariffs are very different. While decades of global free trade have contributed to deindustrialization, workers are not likely to benefit from Trump’s tariffs.

Confronting Capitalism with Vivek Chibber is produced by Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy and published by Jacobin. Subscribe to Jacobin Radio to listen to all of our podcasts here.