“The White House said the new tariffs take effect Feb. 24. Trump’s proclamation exempts a long list of products from the new levies, including beef, tomatoes, oranges, pharmaceuticals, passenger vehicles and certain critical minerals. It also excludes products governed by a trade deal with Canada and Mexico.
Trump vowed Feb. 20 to forge ahead and enact tariffs through other methods after the high court ruled the president doesn’t have the congressional authority to impose tariffs under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
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Trump cited another section of the 1974 Trade Act for the 10% tariffs. The new tariffs apply to countries that send the United States more than they import. But that type of tariff lasts for only 150 days, unless Congress votes to extend them.
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U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said investigations over unfair trade practices could lead to other tariffs. Trump’s proclamation directs Greer to “investigate certain unreasonable and discriminatory acts, policies, and practices that burden or restrict U.S. commerce.”
“We have a lot of tools out there,” Greer said. “You can look forward in the coming days and weeks to see all of that come out.””
“The federal government’s data do not show this “burst” in construction jobs. In fact, quite the opposite: Construction jobs declined by 11,000 in December, the most recent month for which Bureau of Labor Statistics data are available, and grew by just 0.2 percent during 2025 as a whole. Like most other blue-collar professions, jobs in the construction industry have been underwater since last April.
The president’s tariffs aren’t the only factor shaping that job market, but they surely aren’t helping. The Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) reports that overall construction input prices climbed 3.4 percent during 2025.
“Many tariff-affected materials, like derivative metal products and switchgear equipment, have experienced considerable price escalation in 2025,” Anirban Basu, chief economist for the ABC, said in a statement earlier this month. He pointed out that the price of aluminum, which is subject to huge new tariffs imposed by Trump in early 2025, climbed by more than 25 percent last year.
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Why are gas prices falling when other products are getting more expensive?
For one, we are enjoying a period of low oil prices globally. That’s a good thing, though it is also largely beyond the president’s control.
It also seems important to note that gasoline and other oil products are exempt from the Trump administration’s tariffs.
In other words, when a barrel of crude oil crosses the border from Canada, it doesn’t suddenly have an extra 25 percent tax tacked onto it. But when a roll of aluminum or a pallet of lumber crosses the same border, it suddenly becomes significantly more expensive for Americans to buy. As a result, it has become more expensive to build things but gasoline has remained more affordable.”
“Trump’s tariffs, framed as industrial policy to reindustrialize the country, protect workers, and lower prices. Instead, tariffs have quietly consumed much of the manufacturing sector’s profits. This is unsurprising. Most U.S. imports are inputs used to make American goods. Tariffs, therefore, are taxes on American manufacturing.
Empirical work by the Kiel Institute shows that foreign exporters absorb only a trivial share of the cost. Roughly 96 percent of the burden is passed to American buyers. U.S. households and businesses—not foreign firms—overwhelmingly covered the roughly $200 billion in customs revenue collected in 2025. Companies we import from responded not by cutting prices but by shipping fewer goods to the U.S. As Kiel economist Julian Hinz put it, the tariffs amounted to an “own goal” that raised costs, compressed profits, and weakened the very industries they were meant to protect.
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Tariffs did not restore competitiveness or pricing power. They jacked up costs and made American production less attractive at the margin.”
“new data has emerged from Canada showing the near-catastrophic consequences to American alcohol manufacturers from President Donald Trump’s tariff wars. Yet despite clear signs that his tariff policies are backfiring, the president keeps doubling down.”
“the trade deficit increased—not decreased—by nearly 37 percent in November, the most recent month for which data are available. Through the first 11 months of 2025, the trade deficit was 4 percent higher than it had been in 2024. That is literally the opposite of what Trump is claiming.
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“tariffs led to both rapid and gradual retail price increases.” The study found that “prices began rising within days of the March announcements and continued to increase steadily over subsequent months,” and also that “imported goods rose roughly twice as much as domestic goods relative to pre-tariff trends.”
There is no getting away from this fact: tariffs are pushing prices higher. The Harvard Business School, Trump’s favorite source on the matter, recently noted that prices for imported goods are up 9.7 percent from their pre-tariff trends, while domestic prices are up 4.4 percent. Those increases have added an estimated 1 percentage point to inflation as measured by the consumer price index.
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Trump repeatedly backed down and eased tariff threats in the face of negative shocks from both the stock market and the bond market. The “Liberation Day” tariffs announced on April 2 were postponed a week later after a huge stock market sell-off, and those that were later imposed were at lower rates. A threatened 130 percent tariff on Chinese goods never materialized. No wonder “TACO”—”Trump Always Chickens Out”—entered the political and financial lexicon last year.
As the Yale Budget Lab’s data show, Trump raised the average U.S. tariff rate from less than 3 percent to more than 25 percent with his Liberation Day tariffs and other moves in the first half of 2025. But those rates declined in the second half of the year and settled around 17 percent. That’s still very high, but not as high as it could have been—so it makes sense that the consequences were less severe.”
“When The Columbus Dispatch interviewed voters headed to the polls in November 2025, almost all said they liked the idea of property tax abolition but didn’t want to see the quality of local services degrade.
None of Florida’s proposed property tax reforms include any plan to offset the lost revenue. The two measures that would eliminate homestead property taxes also include clauses forbidding local governments from cutting law enforcement funding.
The Ohio nonprofit Citizens for Property Tax Reform notably does not call for offsetting spending cuts. Instead, it suggests increases to sales taxes and local school district income taxes.
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Making up for the revenue lost from property tax cuts would be a tall order.
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Property taxes pay for nearly 30 percent of local government services in both Ohio and Florida. States trying to replace every dollar of property tax revenue with sales or income tax revenue would ultimately reduce overall economic efficiency as well.
Milton Friedman called the property tax (and particularly the tax on the value of unimproved land) the “least bad tax” because it discouraged less economic activity than sales and income taxes.
Property taxes are also less distortionary. People and firms can move to places where they are less heavily taxed to avoid local sales and income taxes. Real estate, in contrast, generally has to stay put.”
Is Trump pushing the world toward a realist Westphalian order with less emphasis on permanent alliances and international organizations, or is he really moving us to a royalist system where global actions are less based on countries and more based on personal, familial, and buddy enrichment and aggrandizement.
Greenland is less about the defense of the US and minerals, which the US could do in Greenland without threats of war because Greenland, through Denmark, is a US ally, and instead about Trump making himself look great by adding territory to the US and making his friends with business interests rich. Ronald Lauder, a billionaire with business interests in Greenland, suggested Trump take Greenland back in 2018. Similarly, refineries that benefit from the Venezuela attack include Trump megadonors. Trump raised tariffs on India after Modi said Trump didn’t play an important role in creating peace between India and Pakistan. So this action was more about Trump’s status and aggrandizement than realist and economic strategy for the benefit of the United States.
Trump says a lot of things, and a lot of it is nonsense. Some of it turns into serious policies with huge consequences. But even the things he says that don’t come true have large consequences because he is president. Investors, businesses, and consumers have to make decisions, and Trump’s actions can impact that, so they have to deal with his words and the potential consequences. Even dealing with just his words, costs companies tons of money.
Inflation is still at 3%. The goal is 2%. The official numbers are 2.7%, but they just assume steady prices on objects they don’t have data on due to the government shutdown. Other experts who don’t just assume steady prices, estimate three percent.
If Trump successfully abuses the rule of law and uses lawfare to gain control over the Fed, inflation will likely go higher.
Before Trump’s new tariffs, inflation was getting close to 2%.