By John Krull
TheStatehouseFile.com
August 24, 2026
Years ago, the late Indianapolis activist Carl Moldthan showed up at an Indianapolis Public Schools event.
The party was supposed to kick off a referendum campaign to raise property taxes to pay for much-needed maintenance and upgrades in IPS. Moldthan loathed tax increases of all kinds.
When the TV cameras at the soiree swiveled in his direction, Moldthan leveled his salvo drolly.
“I just want to see how you celebrate a tax increase,” he deadpanned.
For all practical purposes, the fight was over at that moment. The IPS referendum went down to a crushing defeat at the polls.
That’s because Moldthan read the electorate’s mood better than the school system’s leadership at the time did. He realized that people might support a tax increase if they believed one was necessary, but they weren’t going to dance and sing about it.
When it comes to spending their money, taxpayers expect seriousness, not celebration.
On a much larger scale, President Donald Trump is repeating the mistake IPS made all those years ago.
He’s celebrating the fact that he’s sticking it to the very people who put him back in office. And just as IPS did, he and his Republican Party are about to pay for it at the polls.
His recent disastrous trade negotiations with Canada are but the latest example of Trump’s misguided thinking.
Trump’s mistake is different than the one IPS made.
IPS’ leaders at the time believed that everyone valued education, so they didn’t feel compelled to demonstrate how investing more money in schools would help not just students, but also the community and the individuals who live in the city but don’t have children in its schools. If they’d realized there would be opposition, they could have—and doubtless would have—argued that new businesses and new investment won’t flow to cities without quality schools to produce skilled workers and provide the children of the existing workforce with a strong educational experience.
Instead, they relied on an argument that seemed to them self-evident—education is good and this helps education.
Trump’s error is not that innocent.
His contempt for the intelligence of the American people is so profound that he believes they will swallow anything, however nonsensical, he tells them.
He says, in response to the breakdown in the talks with our neighbors to the north, that he’s pointing a gun at the head of Canada’s government by imposing a 50% tariff on Canadian goods coming into the United States.
In truth, he’s pointing the gun at our heads. That 50% tariff will be paid by American consumers of Canadian products.
Any American who wants to buy any product made in Canada will have to pay at least 50% more for it because the self-proclaimed master of the art of the deal couldn’t reach an agreement with some of the most agreeable people on the face of the earth.
Trump did this at a time when Americans everywhere are complaining about the impact runaway inflation has had on their budgets.
They struggle to make ends meet in the grocery stores, at the gas pumps and shopping for other needed goods as it is.
And their president decided to make that challenge much, much harder.
Trump seems to think this makes him look tough and decisive.
It doesn’t.
Rather, it makes him look clueless and uncomprehending.
He’s doing lasting damage to America and its interests by starting these pointless fights. Canada has retaliated by imposing its own tariffs on U.S. goods, which will make it that much harder for American companies to sell their products to a nation with a rapidly growing population and a rapidly growing economy to match.
Nor is the damage contained to Canada.
Because he has alienated so much of the world, many of our former staunch allies—Canada included—are looking for new trading partners, ones who won’t throw away decades of economic understandings and cooperation on a whim.
Whoever is president next will have a huge job attempting to lure those onetime customers and friends back to doing business with us.
Trump, of course, doesn’t see it that way.
Stuck in his own echo chamber and oblivious both to the harm he’s doing to ordinary Americans and the hostility he’s provoking among erstwhile allies, he rejoices in the latest tariff he’s made his fellow citizens pay.
That’s how Donald Trump celebrates a tax increase.
John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students. The views expressed are those of the author only and should not be attributed to Franklin College. Also, the views and opinions expressed are those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Indiana Citizen or any other affiliated organization.
