Some Declaration of Independence Charges Against King George Apply to Wannabe King Donald Trump 

America is three months away from the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and President Donald Trump is claiming it as his own, with Semiquincentennial dollar coins featuring his image and dollar bills bearing his signature.  

But while Trump exploits America’s birthday for further self-aggrandizement, he should read the document we are ostensibly celebrating. If he bothers, he will find the king from whom America’s founders were declaring independence was behaving in very familiar ways.  

The most famous words from the Declaration are: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Less famous is what follows. 

The signers argued that “governments are instituted” to “secure” our “unalienable rights.” In turn, “whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.” They caveated that not just any transgression necessitates an overthrow (“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes”). However, the “King of Great Britain” had a “history of repeated injuries and usurpations” in the cause of “absolute Tyranny over these States.”  

The document then unleashes a fusillade of charges against the King. 

“He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures,” the founders noted, and is “protecting them … from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States.”  

This accusation referred to the period, starting in the late 1760s, when British soldiers occupied Boston to enforce taxes on imports. After the 1770 clash known as the Boston Massacre, two Redcoats (out of nine brought to trial) were convicted of manslaughter by a Boston jury for firing into a crowd of protesters and killing five. In response, King George enacted a law allowing British officials accused of crimes in Massachusetts to have their trials held elsewhere, in Great Britain or other British colonies, presumably to escape punishment. George Washington dubbed it the “Murder Act.” 

But the Declaration’s language could apply to Trump’s Operation Metro Surge that flooded Minneapolis with armed immigration agents against the wishes of Minnesota’s elected officials, sparking outrage. In separate incidents, federal agents killed two protestors. The Trump administration appears to be “protecting” the agents “from punishment” through a limited investigation that excludes Minnesota law enforcement, who, just last week, sued to get access to the evidence.  

The Declaration of Independence accused King George of “cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world” and “For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent.” That’s because after the legendary Boston Tea Party protest ruined 46 tons of British East India Company tea worth $1.7 million in today’s dollars, the king retaliated against New England by closing Boston Harbor and preventing New England businesses from trading outside of the British Empire.  

At least one can understand why the king was vengeful. Trump, however, has indiscriminately instigated trade wars—even with our closest allies—with higher tariffs, justified with thin claims of other countries “ripping us off.” A Supreme Court ruling that he unconstitutionally asserted emergency powers to set tariff rates prompted some countries to withdraw from bilateral agreements with Trump, negotiated under the threat of higher rates. So Trump quickly imposed a new set of temporary tariffs under a different legal authority, which expire in July, but he is devising further tariffs beyond that point.  

To be fair, Trump’s tariffs fell short of flatly “cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world” as they are full of exemptions. But they have been disruptive to small businesses and farmers. (Trump has tried to quell farmers with bailout money.) And they qualify as an act of “imposing Taxes on us without our Consent.” Trump has raised tariffs unilaterally, without  Congress and without a popular mandate. In 2024, Trump campaigned to lower prices and place the burden of higher tariffs on other countries. In office, his tariffs have cost the average American household $1,700. 

The Founders even criticized King George’s immigration policy: “He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither…” They recognized that with more people comes more prosperity. But King George was operating on the “fictitious principle,” as described by Thomas Jefferson in a 1774 pamphlet, “that all lands belong originally to the king” and he was making it expensive to acquire his land. Trump has similarly tried to exert unilateral authority to clamp down on migration without considering how it would impact local prosperity (The most recent Federal Reserve “beige book” regional economic analysis found that Trump’s immigration enforcement was causing economic harm in the Minneapolis area and, to a lesser extent, in New England.) 

Of course, the rights of America’s indigenous or enslaved peoples were not considered in the Declaration. Worse, the text says the King “has excited domestic insurrections amongst us”—a reference to British offers of freedom for enslaved people who join the Red Coats—“and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.” (Ironically, Jefferson’s first draft of the Declaration accused the king of “cruel war against human nature itself “by “carrying [people] into slavery in another hemisphere” and “suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce” before “exciting those very people to rise in arms among us.”) 

Despite dropping the antislavery rhetoric, the Declaration chronicles King George’s use of monarchical power to suppress freedoms.  Trump’s similar tactics are on full display. 

Nothing about America’s 250th anniversary should be royalizing our Chief Magistrate on our money or in public policy. For our durable democracy to carry on, we should seize this historic moment to reacquaint ourselves with the document that began it all.  

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