Why So Many Businesses Like Trump’s Promise of Tariffs

On this episode of Voternomics, we discuss former US President Donald Trump’s self-proclaimed favorite word: tariffs. While mainstream economists warn that hiking taxes on certain imports is bad for business, not everyone appears to be of the same mind. That became evident last week during Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait’s interview of Trump before the Economic Club of Chicago. The crowd’s enthusiastic reaction to the Republican presidential candidate’s talk of tariffs suggested that many of America’s Midwest businesspeople might take a different view.

Hosts Stephanie Flanders, Adrian Wooldridge and Allegra Stratton discuss the roots of Trump’s love of tariffs with Micklethwait himself and consider whether an “America First” approach could win short-term gains for some parts of the US economy, even if it undermines global trade and weakens America’s global standing in the long-term.