The Wall Street Journal editorial board took a bird’s-eye assessment of President Donald Trump’s tariff system on Wednesday and concluded the effects have overwhelmingly damaged the U.S. economy, American businesses, and American workers.
This follows Trump printing his own opinion piece in the Journal to defend his tariffs, claiming that they “brought America back” — something that the board, which has been critical of the tariffs from the beginning, begs to differ on.
“Mr. Trump starts by torching a straw man — to wit, that critics were wrong to say tariffs would produce a recession. We can only speak for ourselves, but we never predicted that. We said tariffs are a tax that would hurt growth, but their overall impact would depend on whether tax reform and deregulation outweighed the tariff harm,” wrote the board. “So far they have.”
Trump claimed foreign companies will be paying “at least 80%” of the tariffs, wrote the board, but the simple numbers prove that’s not true. “Harvard economists note … that U.S. consumers are bearing up to 43% of the tariff burden, with U.S. companies absorbing most of the rest. That aligns with other research, such as a recent paper from Germany’s Kiel Institute that found Americans pay 96% of the cost of tariffs. Foreign exporters either pass on the full cost of the tariffs to their U.S. customers, or they ship smaller quantities of goods. Americans pay one way or the other — via higher prices or less choice.”
“All of this for what benefit?” the board continued. “Mr. Trump points to the rising stock market, which is true — but it tends to rise when Mr. Trump dials back a tariff threat, and fall when he issues a new one. The S&P 500 index nearly tumbled into a bear market in the days after Mr. Trump’s April ‘Liberation Day’ announcement of across-the-board tariffs. Stocks saw some of their biggest gains of the year on the days when he announced a pause on the China tariffs, and then a ‘deal’ with Beijing. Tariffs are a market loser.”
The bottom line, concluded the board, is that Trump’s biggest achievements “have come despite his tariffs, not because of them. He isn’t going to repeal them. But if he froze them in place now and declared victory, he’d have a better chance of persuading Americans that he’s fulfilling his promise.”
This comes as the Supreme Court is getting ready to hand down a ruling that will almost certainly limit Trump’s authority to declare tariffs without legislation from Congress — although he is reportedly working on a plan to circumvent this.
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