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By Glenn Mollette

Let’s give the tariffs time to work. I am as anxious as you are since everything I have is tied to the stock market. If the stock market dies, I will be working or starving for the rest of my life. Let’s hope things settle down soon. I believe they will grow even bigger.

The tariffs make sense. If China charges us a 25% tariff, then it’s only fair that we charge them one. The same goes for Canada, Mexico, Vietnam and all the others. If they want to charge us 40%, then it is only fair that we charge them the same. What is good for the goose is good for the gander.

Higher prices will come for a while. Car dealerships have seen a lot more people trying to make their deals before all the tariffs are tacked onto the prices.

People are worried about buying cheap stuff from China at Walmart or any other country. I honestly do not want stuff from China. If China never ships another thing here, it would not bother me. Sadly, everything I own today is, in some way, likely tied to a foreign country.

When I was a kid, I had a transistor radio made in Hong Kong. I thought it was funny to have such an item made from so far away. Throughout the years it became the norm. Cars, televisions, furniture, appliances and steel started coming from other places. Sadly, our American manufacturers were moving to Mexico or any country on the planet where they could find slave labor. This turned into big profit for them because they shipped the goods cheaply back to the United States and made big profits. The problem was that those jobs were forever lost in America. The American workers had to go out and find jobs at Walmart and Starbucks making $10 an hour, which today is more like $15 to $18. They had been used to making $35 or $40 an hour before their job moved out of America.

People are crying today about what might happen to the prices at Walmart. Unfortunately, all Americans can afford today is Walmart. Americans are so poor that we have to rely on Dollar General Store or Walmart.

Back in the ’50s, ’60s and even ’70s, people could go to one of the big cities in their state and find a good-paying manufacturing job. There were lots of jobs. We made a lot of cars, televisions, radios, clothes, furniture, steel, lumber, and had coal mining and much more. These people made enough money to buy a house, two cars, food, raise their kids and have a real retirement after working 30 years. That was called the American dream.

Today, the American dream is to apply for disabled Social Security and then pray that you can afford to go to Walmart. Do not even think about buying a new car, a new house or taking a vacation. On today’s income it is not going to happen.

Let’s try to keep breathing and see how these tariffs play out. We need jobs to come back to America — our own companies to come home. We need to buy our own American steel and make things here once again.

If other countries will come to America, build their products here and hire our people, that will be a good thing.

Just maybe, in a few years, people in America will dream once again.

(Dr. Glenn Mollette is the author of “Uncommon Sense,” available wherever books are sold. His column is published weekly in over 600 publications in all 50 states.)