Sorry: Those Tariffs Aren't Going Anywhere
Ramos | CLMI
Even with the Trump administration’s recent about-face on tariffs, lowering the economic missile on daily items such as beef, coffee, basic fruits, juices and other staples, the cost of living still remains high. Tariffs are not being viewed as a useful foreign policy drill bit as the administration first expected. Instead, Americans are worried it’s the key driver of inflation and corporate price-gouging. Tariffs are still impacting luxury or casual activities such as going to the mall, eating at a restaurant and shopping online, all amenities of stereotypical suburban life.
But a question administration officials may have not considered in their bid to balance trade deficits was how the average American can enjoy routine these activities when prices rise to unpayable levels, particularly as employment and wages stagnate. As a result, a majority of Americans are blaming tariffs for increased product pricing, as the latest YouGov poll shows …
During his first term, Trump was a consistent advocate for increased taxation on any and all imported goods. This was soft launched, in a sense, with tariff increases on goods from China, the United State’s 3rd largest trading partner. St. Louis Federal Reserve economists Maximiliano Dvorkin and Cassandra Marks explain that Trump happily manifested those beliefs, considering it as the first test in a laboratory of future tariffs on other countries, assessing how it would impact various goods, products and services. The ambitious and global shaking tariff regime launched in August 2025 is an expansion of that philosophy, with some benefits: revenues from tariffs have soared to $195 billion in Fiscal Year 2025 …
Still, that’s just a small fraction of current US Gross Domestic Product of nearly $31 trillion. Even with the reversal on some major consumer products and other items (perhaps giving the broader public the impression of pocketbook reprieve), tariffs aren’t ending anytime soon …
Final Thoughts
There should be greater consideration of how consumers, local businesses and independently owned organizations are dealing with the current tariff environment. Creators with small businesses, for example, are either being forced to increase their base price to pay for shipping costs, or are giving notices that they are not shipping to the U.S. entirely due to the complications that come with it. As Brookings’ Jay Shambaugh further argues …
First, tariffs reduce imports—again, a taxed activity dwindles over time. The U.S. will lose the gains from trade. Consumers will now have to pay extra to access to preferred goods; for example, tariffs hurt U.S. consumers who might prefer Brazilian coffee but see the 50 percent tax on it as too high a cost to pay. Firms will have to pay extra for their preferred sources for inputs and will be unable to continue making or selling goods that they have built businesses around if they suddenly have to pay tariffs. If the tariffs are so onerous that they stop trade altogether, America will have to go back to making some goods it has not made for decades. Doing so would be costly—the fact that they are produced more inexpensively abroad is why Americans import them. It does not make sense to build greenhouses to grow peppers in the winter when you can import them from Chile (who has summer during the U.S. winter).
Geopolitically, the costs appear higher than any of the dividends or benefits the Trump administration first assumed. While the administration was eager to use the mechanism as a way to raise revenue - in an effort to close gaps from lower taxes - the results are dubious: higher consumer prices, stressors on businesses (especially smaller ones), higher unemployment, and negative effects on the United States’ relationship with other countries. While the use of tariffs as a negotiating tool in key conflict zones or flashpoints might seem somewhat attractive, the broader economic and trading impacts make even this approach questionable.
EMILY RAMOS is a Fellow at the Civic Literacy and Media Influence Institute at Learn4Life.
