Fox News, Conservative Influencers Say Tariffs Will Restore Masculinity

According to economists, President Trump’s nonsensical tariffs—justified only by his apparent, childlike desire to be on the phone 24/7 with foreign countries—are already an unmitigated disaster. Even his own ride-or-die allies like Barstool’s Dave Portnoy and semi-literate Twitch streamer Adin Ross conceded this week that, as the stock market plunges, they’ve lost $7 million and $10 million, respectively. Portnoy, who endorsed Trump, sweepingly blamed the president for his economic woes this week, dubbing Monday “Orange Monday.” Meanwhile, Ross cried to his viewers this week that “it’s so bad.”

Trump is only doing what he promised, so his ultra-rich supporters who are losing their fortunes only have themselves to blame. But while some Trump voters are suffering buyer’s remorse, others are doubling and tripling down, zeroing in on an abjectly hilarious counter-narrative: The tariffs are good because they’ll restore masculinity to America.

The thinking is that high tariffs on imported goods will recreate the manufacturing boom of the 1890s and men will return to the steel mills while pesky women in the workplace will be sent back to the kitchen. (In reality, you’ll recall that the 1890s and early industrial America were essentially a heyday for child labor, more so than a golden age for alpha males. Alas!) The goal is, presumably, the resurgence of some semblance of traditional, patriarchal gender roles.

Over the weekend, conservative columnist Batya Ungar-Sargon (perhaps better known for writing off Elon Musk’s Inauguration Day, Nazi-like salute as merely a marker of autism) stopped by Fox & Friends to posit that, actually, the total collapse of the global economy could fix our “crisis in masculinity.”

“It’s not just the destruction of the economic vitality of the working class. We shipped jobs that gave men who work with their hands for a living, and rely on brawn and physicality, off to other countries to build up their middle class,” she explained. “We imported millions and millions of illegals to work in construction, manufacturing, landscaping, janitorial services—jobs that used to give men access to the American dream.” I have only the utmost respect for the individuals of all genders who work in those professions. That being said, the reason fewer white men are doing these jobs compared with previous generations is that they don’t want to, and increasingly have other options. I can really only laugh picturing Ungar-Sargon trying to make this case to Trump-supporting software engineers or middle managers or Dave Portnoy, explaining to them that the stock market collapse is good for them, because they’ll find more existential fulfillment in a factory.

Having a normal one

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— Joe Sonka 😐 (@joesonka.lpm.org) April 7, 2025 at 6:23 PM

This conversation on Fox News carried over into Monday, when noted masculinity philosopher Jesse Watters led a segment on The Five pondering if, as one chyron read, “TRUMP TARIFFS WILL MAKE YOU A MAN?” Then, along with co-host Greg Gutfield, Watters removed the question and the two discussed, as another chyron read, “TRUMP’S MANLY TARIFFS.” “When you sit behind a screen all day, it makes you a woman. Studies have shown this,” Watters, who sits in front of a camera all day, said. “And if you’re out working, like building robots… you are around other guys. You’re not around HR ladies and lawyers that gives you estrogen.” Funny story! Watters actually met his current, second wife in the workplace. She was his intern and he slashed her tires one day to force her to let him drive her home. Anyway, I digress: To Watters’ argument, I offer the counter-argument that if your masculinity is so fragile that being in proximity with women can infect you with estrogen, you probably have bigger problems. Watters went on to ramble about how real men don’t actually “need $50 off a flat screen TV,” priming his audience members to accept a recession and being unable to afford nice things with grace. Masculinity, according to Watters, is getting fleeced by a senile billionaire in the White House who doesn’t care whether any of us live or die.

This narrative—that the tariffs will restore masculinity in the workplace by sending men back to factories—seemed to emerge from a viral tweet by Breitbart News editor-turned-far-right influencer Milo Yiannopoulos: “Men are depressed and addicted and broken because they have nothing to do. They get no stimulation or satisfaction from BS email jobs. I’m telling you, white Americans will love working in factories again. Making things, in the image and likeness of God the Maker,” he wrote on Friday. (I’ll note that one user aptly told him that factory jobs are innately “dehumanizing” rather than empowering, to which Yiannopoulos replied, “Get therapy”—a crazy thing for someone so clearly insecure about his own masculinity to say to anyone else.)

Men are depressed and addicted and broken because they have nothing to do. They get no stimulation or satisfaction from BS email jobs. I’m telling you, white Americans will love working in factories again. Making things, in the image and likeness of God the Maker.

— MILO (@Nero) April 4, 2025

So… this appears to be diehard Trump supporters’ justification for a slate of tariffs that even Trump’s “First Buddy” Elon Musk has written off as patently stupid: that making things with their own hands will be fulfilling for men and that tanking the economy is worthwhile if it means recreating all-male workplaces. 

Speaking of that: In addition to Yiannopoulos’ tweet, another has been going around as justification for the tariffs. “Tariffs or this? Tariffs,” conservative author Max Lugavere tweeted over the weekend, resharing a viral video of a group of young Australian women filming a silly TikTok in their Australian office building. (I emphasize that these women are based in Australia because so much of the ire they’ve drawn, largely from Americans, seems premised on the idea that they’re American women, when… that isn’t the case at all!!!) The obvious, cartoonishly sexist subtext of that tweet is that women holding jobs and agency, and—god forbid!—being a little silly in the workplace, is somehow vastly worse than an impending recession. With four words—“Tariffs or this? Tariffs”—the viral tweet says the quiet part aloud: Certain conservative men are willing to destroy their own lives, their own country’s economic system, so long as they destroy women’s lives, too. 

“Great Depression or women having jobs and agency” is the obvious cartoonishly misogynistic subtext of this but that doesn’t even make sense because these are Australian women in Australia running their Australian women skincare brand https://t.co/EiSGFRcX6B

— Kylie Cheung (@kylietcheung) April 6, 2025

It’s not lost on me that this narrative—that Trump tariffs could be a gift to young men by making them big and strong again—comes during a heyday for the right-wing, masculinity influencers and podcasters known as the “manosphere,” which aggressively coalesced around Trump on the campaign trail. But at the same time, Portnoy and Ross—two key figures in this space—don’t seem best pleased about their tanking assets, nor do they seem particularly interested in forfeiting their lucrative, screen-based content creation jobs to return to the factories. 

It’s hard for me to say where we go from here. Different factions of Trump supporters who had diverging motivations for voting for him seem to be branching off. I certainly don’t relish the threat of a massive recession and all the people who will lose far more than Portnoy or Ross. At the same time, I can’t help but take some satisfaction in watching Trump’s ultra-rich voters get exactly what they voted for. It’s the little things sometimes!