“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.”
“The social impact of the housing affordability crisis is huge: fewer marriages, less household formation, lower birth rates, lower economic growth. The prices of stocks and bonds can go up indefinitely with few consequences. But housing is something people need, in addition to being an asset. It is an asset you also consume.”
The job growth was good compared to recent months, but not actually good. The job growth was heavily concentrated in healthcare and social assistance. These are jobs caused by our aging society, but not good underlying economic growth.
The jobs numbers for 2025 were revised, and job growth was very low for 2025.
“Creating true housing affordability for homebuyers would require an expansion of housing supply to lower overall housing prices—the thing Trump said he did not want to do.
The good news is that the federal government does not have too much direct influence over the number of homes that are built in the country. It’s local and state governments that decide what’s allowed to be built where.
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it’d also be a mistake to completely dismiss the idea that we can lower buyers’ housing costs and raise property values at the same time. Contra the president, that can easily be accomplished by allowing more homes to be built on existing residential land.
Free markets are generally win-win institutions. One should expect that free market reforms in the housing sector would produce win-wins for homeowners, buyers, and builders.
When local officials “upzone” land to allow more housing to be built on it, one expects the value of that land to increase to reflect the additional development potential. If a single-family property is upzoned to allow apartment construction, the current owner will see a windfall increase in the value of their property.”
“Warsh has been critical of the Fed in recent months but is seen as a conventional choice for the role. Warsh has a background in the Bush administration, and he was appointed by former President George W. Bush as Fed governor, serving in that role during the financial crisis from 2006 until 2011.
Although he is considered a relatively safe pick, Warsh faces an uncertain path ahead in the Senate due to potential Republican opposition. North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, whose vote is needed to advance the nomination out of the Senate Banking Committee, reiterated that he would oppose any Fed chair pick until the Department of Justice’s investigation into Fed Chair Powell is resolved.”
The centrality of the United States in the world financial system allows it to use that power to cut countries and people off from basic financial services. The United States has long used this power to cut off rogue states, but Trump is abusing this power and the power of the US domestic market, which could lead to a rebellion and weaken America’s power to use these tools when it more needs it.
Trump ran on China being a major threat, but his aggressive actions toward non-China countries, has strengthened China’s relationships with these countries and made China stronger compared to the US.
Trump throws around power to try to get short term gains, not realizing that long term no one trusts him or the US and this ultimately weakens US power.
The Phillipines beat out India on out-sourced phone customer service jobs because Filipinos could speak English with an accent more understandable to Americans.