The True Cost of Trump’s Tariff Scheme
As much as $325 billion would be shaved off US gross domestic product, vastly reducing the envisioned fiscal benefits.
He REALLY likes tariffs.
Photographer: Scott Olson/Getty Images
Pundits sometimes claim that US presidential campaigns are devoid of big, consequential policy ideas. That’s clearly not true this time around. Arguably the most profound policy change being proposed in this campaign is former President Donald Trump’s big idea to broadly raise tariffs on imported goods, possibly to levels the US has not seen in many decades.
Tariffs, like all economic policies, come with trade-offs. New analysis of mine at The Budget Lab at Yale University, a nonpartisan fiscal research center, uses economic modeling and evidence to quantify some of these trade-offs. In short, the proposed tariffs will raise some revenue but at a severe - and literal - price tag to the economy.