One Year After "Liberation Day," Did Trump's Tariffs Deliver?

On April 2, 2025, President Trump announced sweeping "reciprocal" tariffs on Liberation Day, promising an investment boom, massive revenue, debt reduction, and lower prices. One year later, Kyle Hulehan and Erica York dig into the data to see how those promises held up.

0:00 - Liberation Day speech recap
2:00 - Were the tariffs actually "reciprocal"?
5:30 - The real math behind the tariff formula
10:00 - Market reactions and policy chaos
14:00 - The promised investment boom that never arrived
17:30 - Tariff revenue vs. projections and the national debt
22:00 - Who actually paid the tariffs?
25:30 - Business uncertainty and real-world impacts
29:30 - Could any version of these tariffs have worked?
36:00 - The five broken promises of Liberation Day
37:00 - What comes next after the Supreme Court ruling

Resources:
Tax Foundation Tariff Tracker: https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/federal/trump-tariffs-trade-war/
Tax Foundation Trade & Tariff Research: https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/federal/topics/trade/
Subscribe to the Tax Foundation: https://taxfoundation.org/subscribe/

Transcript

Trump 0:00

And you see what's happened for nations that treat us badly, we will calculate the combined rate of all their tariffs, non-monetary barriers and other forms of cheating. And because we are being very kind, we're kind people, very kind. You are not so kind when you get ripped off But we will charge them approximately half of what they are and have been charging us. So the tariffs will be not a full. Reciprocal. I could have done that I guess, but it would've been tough for a lot of countries. We didn't wanna do that. I'd like to see the chart if you have it. Could you bring it up, Howard? So if you look at that China first row, China 67%, that's tariffs charged to the USA, including. Currency manipulation and trade barriers. So 67%, I think you can, for the most part see it. Those with good eyes. With bad eyes. We didn't wanna bring the, it's very windy out here. We didn't wanna bring out the big charts'cause it had no chance of standing. Fortunately, we came armed with a little smaller charge, so it's 67%. So we're gonna be charging a discounted reciprocal tariff of 34%. I think. In other words, they charge us, we charge them, we charge them less. So how can anybody be upset? They will be because we never charge anybody anything. But now we're gonna charge, uh, European Union, they're very tough, very, very tough traders. Uh. You know, you think of European Union, very friendly. They rip us off. It's so sad to see. It's so pathetic. 39%, we're gonna charge them 20%.

Kyle 1:42

Hello and welcome to the Deduction of Tax Foundation Podcast. I'm your host, Kyle Houlahan, and we are back with another episode today. And I am joined by my co-host, Erica York. Today we're gonna cover the one year anniversary of the Liberation Day Tariffs. So we were real quick, we were talking about like, you know, free will and kids running around and, um, I think there's a, a tie in here with something we would call liberation. Um, so I, I think, look. There's, there's an idea, there was an invention. There's something, the greatest thing really ever known to mankind, tariffs. And a year ago now, we had something called Liberation Day. And Liberation Day was promising to be one of the greatest days in US history, and it promised. Wealth jobs, trillions in revenue, lower prices, um, tariffs were supposed to really change this country. And Erica, I wanna know, one year later, did it happen?

Erica 2:52

Are we in the golden Age no. I I don't think we are. There were, there were a lot of grand promises made on Liberation Day. Um, you listed several of them. I, I went back and wad. The President's Liberation Day speech, and he made these sweeping claims about the benefits that American workers would see, um, that the federal debt would be paid down, um, that this was gonna be a really. Big turning point. Um, and you know, I think, we'll, we'll go through several of the questions like point by point that, that Trump made in his speech, but one year later, um, when we look at the data, when we look at the early, you know, academic papers that are coming in on what effects did the tariffs have, most cases, they had the opposite effects of, of what President Trump said would happen.

Kyle 3:43

so there was the term reciprocal, which is I think, interesting when it comes to tariffs and I think. That premise is, is a little bit of a fiction. No, it, it was, it was marketing. Like, we're gonna get back at these other countries reciprocal tariffs. But really we were placing tariffs on people that weren't doing anything to us. Um, if you wanna maybe break that down for us a little bit.

Erica 4:08

Yeah, I like that idea that reciprocal was really a marketing term. It was not a policy description. So Trump said that his idea on Liberation Day was really simple. The US would charge the same tariffs on imports that our trading partners charge on our exports, but really what was implemented on Liberation day and the days following, um. We're not reciprocal at all. Um, you know, for, for decades, tariffs for the most part had fallen. And most countries, um, especially those that were our main trading partners, maintained relatively low tariffs. You could go, you know, sector by sector and maybe find some examples of real discrimination, whether it's in the ag market or the auto market, but for the most part. Barriers to trade were pretty low. Um, and US barriers to trade were pretty low. And Trump, on liberation day, you know, he had those big charts and he went through part of his speech saying like, China charges the US this tariff and Canada charges the US this tariff and the EU charges the US this tariff. And it was this. A big chart that he claimed, um, they had done the math for, and they said they had done the math, they had added up the tariffs, the non tariff barriers, like currency manipulation or other types of discriminatory policies, and quantified them and said, this is the barrier that US exports face. But in the days that followed, um, the United States Trade Representative actually published the underlying formula that they used to get to these numbers, it had nothing to do with the policies that foreign countries use. Um, there were no terms for foreign tariffs, for currency manipulation, for non tariff barriers. Instead, it was a formula that basically simplified two. Bilateral trade deficits. Um, does the US run a bilateral trade deficit with this country? If so, we're gonna, you know. Calculate are our tariff based on the size of that deficit. And bilateral trade deficits don't have anything to do with the tariffs charged or not charged. We run trade deficits with countries that we have free trade agreements with where there are no tariffs in place or really low tariffs. Um, so the entire idea that this was just a simple reciprocal tariff was, was a farce.

Kyle 6:32

Real quick for, for dummies like me who aren't as smart as you, could you explain what, what that even means? Like a bilateral trade deficit.

Erica 6:42

So bilateral just means looking at one country and the United States. So the, the trade between our country and one of our trading partners, and if we have a goods trade deficit, it means we buy more goods from them than they buy for us, from us. So we might buy a hundred billion dollars from them and they buy 50 billion from us. The difference there is a$50 billion trade deficit. We might buy more things from a country because they produce a lot of what we want and we don't produce a lot of what they want. Or they might be a poor country and they can't afford to buy as much from us as we buy from them. Or they may just be a lot smaller than us. And so of course we can afford to buy more than than they can afford. There are a number of things that can drive these bilateral trade deficits. They're not indicative of. Um, you know, some, some type of. Trading policy abuse, like you and I both have trade deficits with our local grocery store. We buy a heck of a lot more from a grocer than they buy from us. That does not mean that the grocer has some abusive practice in place. It's just the way that that happens to shake out.

Kyle 7:47

And you're saying that was, that's the math that was used on our, on our, on our big lovely chart that we all love so much that we saw that has been now MeMed to death, that that was the math.

Erica 7:58

that's the math. They had this entire equation that had different Greek terms in it, that had different elasticities and responses, but. They set those numbers to where all of the complicated stuff canceled out. Uh, maybe we can put it on the screen, um, and, and show it. But all the complicated stuff canceled out because they purposefully chose like a 0.25 and a four, so that would multiply and equal one. So those terms. Uh, by construction all fell out. And all that was left was the bilateral trade deficit. Um, and they pointed to like actual academic studies for some of these terms that they used, but they didn't use the values that those academic studies found. They set the values. To where they would cancel. Um, so, you know, my colleagues wrote about this. Um, some folks at a EI wrote about this and said, you know, if you correct these errors, um, or these fake numbers that were put into the calculations, it would actually show you something very different and bigger picture. These calculations again, do not reflect on actual trade policies that that countries have in place. Um, so the numbers, the taxes that we imposed on US imports based on the Liberation Day mass, had nothing to do with actual tariffs or trade barriers that other countries impose. And besides that, um, they changed like more than 50 times between Liberation Day and now. tariff policy has changed more than 50 times. Um, and some of that was. Yeah, because of, I think the, the market reaction to the high tariffs, um, if you go back to what markets did after liberation Day after, um, there was retaliation right after Liberation Day, if you remember, China said, okay, we're gonna match that. And so then President Trump said, okay, well, we're gonna increase your tariff to 84%. And China said. Alright, we'll do that. And then the US increased their tariff to 125%. We had 125% tariffs in place for a month. That's when, you know, there was the big market reaction. Um, port traffic plummeted because who is going to import stuff from China when they have to pay a 125% tax on it? And then we saw really big revisions after that. Um, so the tariffs weren't reciprocal in the first place and they changed so many times after Liberation Day too.

Kyle 10:21

I think there's one thing I wanna touch on here, Erica, which is, it's something that, um, uh, one of our policy experts here at Tax Foundation, Alex Durante touched on, um, with tariffs, which is that it kind of, look, we had, we're talking about the math here in all of this, but it also involves a little bit of. Some crony capitalism that we don't like because you had, you know, apple go, uh, I can't remember the CEO of Apple's name. Uh, cook Tim Cook.

Erica 10:48

Yep.

Kyle 10:49

Cook, go talk to President Trump and he gets an exemption. And you have different people go get their exemptions. And that is a huge problem. That's not a broad policy. That's not, that is, that is a, a king sort of making a decision, you know? And it's like, you are fine. We'll, we'll let you out. And that, and that's not a good policy mechanism at all.

Erica 11:09

So, so we had all of the rate changes. We also had the exemptions. Uh, if you, if you also remember back to Liberation Day, there was this idea of a baseline tariff. We're going to put a 10% baseline tariff on all imports into the United States. Um, but little by little, sometimes company. Product or product category at a time. Exemptions were granted by the end of 2025, the IEPA tariffs. Um, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act tariffs that that President Trump used to impose Liberation Day covered just about 42% of US imports. So rather than being this broad full coverage tariff, um, exemptions were granted and. Yeah, those exemptions don't tend to go to the little guy. They don't tend to go to the mom and pop main street business that doesn't have a trade lawyer that can't lobby for exemptions. They go to the big guys who are already more able to deal with fluctuating tariffs because they have, you know, the cash on hand to stuff before it comes in, before the tariffs take effect. They have inventory management, um. it, it creates this really uncertain policy environment that hurts smaller firms more than it hurts larger firms. And it also contributed to the, the chaos of, of 2025 and, and tariff policy. Um, so. Yeah, we, we had this idea that tariffs weren't really reciprocal in the first place. Um, exemptions were granted, so it was kind of a pick and choose tariff scheme, and it was President Trump in control of that often through social media posting, um, making those changes throughout the year. And if you look at some of the areas that are growing the most, where is investment growing? Where is economic growth being driven from? Um, it's, it's a lot of ai and that's where a lot of the exemptions were granted too. The computer equipment where, you know, imports are still growing, where investment is still growing. That entire sector has been exempt from the tariffs. They don't have any industry specific tariffs applied to them currently, and they were exempt from. The Liberation Day baseline tariffs, and they're now exempt from the section 1 22 temporary tariffs. Um, so there's this really big mismatch even between where we're seeing growth and where we are seeing promises of investment and then the tariffs not applying there. Um, so it's like the president has said that tariffs are the key to jobs and investment and growth, but the area where the economy is really growing and really hot right now is completely exempt from the tariff policy.

Kyle 13:52

we can move on to the next point here, which is, um, the investment and jobs boom, that kind of what wasn't and didn't really exist. Um, you know, uh, president Trump claimed, I think that there was going to be like six to 18 trillion or new investment, like a lot of, a lot of money was supposed to be invested here. What happened?

Erica 14:16

Boom. Didn't happen. At least it hasn't happened yet. If we wanna be really charitable. you know, in his Liberation Day speech, president Trump said there had already been$6 trillion of investments and pledges, and that that number would grow tremendously by the end of the year. Um, he has often in speeches, like in the State of the Union address. In, um, an an A piece that he pinned for the Wall Street Journal, defending the tariff policy. He's used the number 18 trillion. The White House has its own investment tracker and pledges, um, where they're supposedly keeping track of all this new investment that's going to be coming or already has, and that shows a number around 10 trillion. But I think just. Some context is important for these claims. We have a$30 trillion economy in most years. Total private investment in the economy is around$5 trillion. So even if we had a$6 trillion boost in one year investment, that's more than double the amount of investment that we have in a normal year. That. That scale alone of just the smallest claim Trump has made is like impossible. Um, you know, most people will then say, well, these are pledges that are gonna take place over the next decade. That's not the way President Trump has talked about it. He has talked about it as if these dollars are already here being invested now, and we, we should be seeing that show up in the numbers and, and we haven't. And I'll say that$5 trillion number is total private investment. The numbers that President Trump talks about are a more specific subcategory of investment. He's talking about foreign firms and foreign governments directly investing into the United States, so FDI, foreign direct investment. Actual FDI in 2025 was$288.4 billion. That's lower than the 10 year average that we've seen a PA over the past decade, and it's lower than every year from 2021 to 2024. So instead of this really big spike in foreign direct investment in 2025, it actually was about even keel and a little bit lower than we've seen in recent years. So, no. Spike noticeable whatsoever. The, the investment boom that Trump promised just did not happen. There is no way to look at the data and say like that the tariffs worked to, to spike investment the way President Trump promised and has claimed that, that they have.

Kyle 16:54

Yeah. And I think, um, there, there's also the, there, there seems to constantly be this issue of what is promised versus reality. And I think we see that a lot in, we see a lot of his campaign promises and then what they've become and maybe the one big beautiful bill or other things. And there none of it's quite matching what he said. And I think another big problem is that a lot of it has not led to any sort of positive. Change necessarily. So we had, you know, billions or trillions promised, you know, um, in terms of, of revenue gained, um, and the debt was supposed to go down, but it's actually gotten bigger. So, so where are we at with those promises in terms of revenue versus reality?

Erica 17:41

I mean, the tariffs generated revenue. There's no doubt about that because tariffs are a tax increase. Um, tariffs increase how much money is going into the US Treasury as US importers have to pay a tariff bill when they bring goods into the United States. The issue here is the, the magnitude, um, president Trump and his advisors claimed something on the order of$600 billion a year. Would be raised by the new tariffs. revenue for all of calendar year 2025 was$264 billion in custom duties, and that includes preexisting tariffs. If you look at just the Liberation Day and the other IEPA tariffs altogether. Those generated about$166 billion in custom duties revenue before the Supreme Court struck them down. So far short of the 600 billion a year that folks like Peter Navarro and President Trump claimed would be rolling in. And there's also an important nuance to know when tariff payments go up that has a. Producing effect on income and payroll taxes. Um, so the net revenue generated by tariffs is gonna be less than the direct tariff payments coming in because once the US government taxes that, once that dollar of revenue is in treasury, it can't be taxed again. Um, so income and payroll tax revenues fall because factor. like the, the income that you earn from labor or from capital investment falls when tariffs are pulled out of the economy behind all of this, um, you know, president Trump said during liberation day and during several speeches after that, the tariff revenue would be used to pay down the national debt. The national debt has continued increasing every quarter that President Trump has been in office. Um, so revenues came in. Far lower than what Trump and his advisor said, and national debt kept growing. Really what, what we've learned from this is that tariffs cannot be a fundamental or a large source of revenue for the 21st century federal government. The math just isn't there. Trump has said that he's going to increasingly rely on tariffs to fully replace the income tax, but in today's economy, with the size of the federal government that we have now, tariffs cannot. Fully replace the income tax and they can't be a large enough source of federal, um, government revenue to even close the budget deficit that we have now, let alone begin paying down the federal debt.

Kyle 20:24

And I think one of the like funny or interesting parts of this is, okay, so we have the tariff revenue that came in that, that 264 billion, and then there was this idea of. Sending out rebate checks to American citizens, which is sort of an admission in its own sense that with it being a rebate check that we had to pay for it. So let's send the money back to the people, and then the government isn't actually funding itself at all. They're just sending money back to us.

Erica 20:58

That whole chapter is just, yeah, really illustrative of the, the promises that made and then broken. So we have the tariffs. They're gonna maybe pay for tax cuts, they're gonna pay for farmer bailouts, they're gonna pay down the debt. Oh, and also we're gonna send$2,000 rebate checks out to everyone with this tariff revenue. And then that never happened. Um, and, and now that the tariffs have been struck down, that money that was illegally collected is actually supposed to be returned to the importers that had to pay it. Um, that process is still being worked out as the government's trying to slow walk it and appeal the, the need to even rebate that money to the. who paid it in the first place. But yeah, big promises of revenue, big promises of how that revenue is going to both be spent and also pay down the federal debt. And then none of that panning out. Um, just par for the course. Really, I.

Kyle 21:54

And again, you know, we've touched on this a lot before, but we'll, we'll hit it one more time for the people, which is Erica. We, God, we should have like a music drop for this part, like, or something. I don't know who actually paid the tariffs. Uh.

Erica 22:11

American businesses and American consumers for the most part. Um, you know, president Trump. Insisted over and over that foreign countries would pay the tariffs. There's really no mechanism by which a foreign country can pay tariffs. President Trump talked about it as tariffs are going to be something we charge foreigners for access to our market. Again, that's not how the tariffs work. Um, legally, the tariffs are paid by importers in the United States, bringing goods into the country. Economically, they can, the burden of tariffs can be shared by several different people, right? It can stay with the importer, it can be passed on to downstream businesses like that buy, um. Inputs or machinery and equipment, it can make its way into retail prices. So we pay part of the tariff burden in a hidden way at the checkout counter. It can also burden foreign sellers if they want to lower their prices to sell into the United States. Um, it can hurt foreigners too, even if they don't lower their prices, because us consumers buy fewer foreign goods when there's tax on those foreign goods, and so they might see their profits fall even if they don't change their prices. What the evidence shows us so far is that import prices remained fairly stable. If, if foreigners were lowering their prices to sell into the US market, you would see those import prices fall the. We haven't seen much of that. There's some new research that looked at 2018 and 2019 and found that maybe foreigners are absorbing, um, that burden on different margins. Maybe it's through quantity changes. Um, so we should expect foreigners to be hurt by the trade war, but we should not expect them as President Trump said to bear the entire burden of tariffs. And indeed, they, they have not. Most research has found that the tariffs have primarily passed through the US economy. They have contributed. Somewhat to retail prices. Um, you know, it's not a sudden overnight shock either businesses take time to make pricing decisions. They may have had pre tariff inventories that they could draw down, and so you wouldn't expect, you know, overnight from when a tariff is imposed to that show up on the, the sticker price that you're paying at the grocery store the next day. Um, and indeed, research shows that. Companies have kind of slow rolled the tariff price increases as they're in this pattern of uncertainty and tariffs on again and off again, and what do we do? Um, so that has probably mitigated some of the retail price impact. Uh, we might see more of that come out even, even in this year. Um, but it has been in effect, and even the, the Federal Reserve Chairman has directly attributed some of the lingering inflation in goods prices. Two tariffs. Um, so they have absolutely had an effect on prices in the US economy. Um, prices have not, um, come down as, as President Trump kind of alluded to, um, when, when he took office and when he imposed these tariffs.

Kyle 25:15

And I think I, I'll have like sort of a personal anecdote here, which I think is interesting is my brother-in-law owns a small construction company. It's really just him and a few other people. And this year or at the beginning. Of, I guess, uh. In 2025, after the Liberation Day tariffs, he started to put an asterisk on all of his estimates in everything that he was sending out to customers when they would be like, okay, we want this addition made on our house, or whatever. Because the lumber market did fluctuate. Um, and, and different things changed throughout the year and sometimes, you know, he could have a project going on for 4, 5, 6, 8 months, a whole year. And so it's like, this is just gonna go up and down and I'm gonna have to send you different updates. And, uh, it, it was interesting hearing him talk about the, the paperwork nightmare that was for him and, and the constant updating there was nothing he could rely on, I think comfortably, and especially as someone who owns a small business like he does, uh, it became a, a sort of a, a nightmare of estimation, um, which I think is like a, a perfect example of, of why this is such a problem.

Erica 26:21

Exactly. And there, there are lots of anecdotes like that in the Federal Reserve's beige book that comes out multiple times a year. Um, they, you know, talk to different business contacts in the different Federal Reserve districts and you see tons of stories like that. It was just this, I. Period of heightened instability and uncertainty. And if you're trying to price something or you know, decide if you're, if you're gonna make a new investment or hire a new worker, how do you do that when you don't know what the price of your inputs is going to be? US tariff policy changed more than 50 times. That means you could think you, you like order something and it's on a boat and you think you know what the tax bill is going to be, and then because of a US policy change, your tax bill could go way up. Or it could go way down and you have no way of predicting that. There were even instances where, um, you know, tariff, tariff bills changed after the fact because of uncertainty over the order in which different tariffs would stack. So you may have a. Sector specific tariff and you had a reciprocal tariff and a baseline tariff, and depending on how, you know, the CBP agent that you're working with interpreted that guidance, your tariff bill may be very different than than what you expected. And that's no, yeah, no, no way to run an economy and no way to, you know, create an environment where businesses are supposed to grow and invest if they don't even know what, what their, um, what their tariff bill is going to be.

Kyle 27:49

I would say this is like I, I, I'll give an inside baseball example into Erica's life in my own life, is that there's a tariff tracker on our website, which is a valuable resource if you want. Understand what's going on with tariffs. But with the exception of the week between Christmas and New Year's where we close, we have updated that tariff tracker every week with something new.'cause something changed and there was something that needed to change since Liberation Day. Uh, so we've been doing this all year long. We've done it 51 times, so there's been a lot of.

Erica 28:21

were some weeks where we needed to make multiple changes, but we decided we're just gonna wait till Friday because if we change it on a Wednesday and then the policy changes on a Thursday and we have to change it again on a Friday, let's just roll it into a weekly update. So, yeah. Yeah.

Kyle 28:36

Yeah, there, there was definitely times where it was like, okay, we're moving this to 25% and then the next day it was like, actually we can move it back down to 10%. Actually, it was a learning process for action actually, where we were like, we're gonna do this once a week instead of whenever it changes.'cause it might not stay the same for very long.

Erica 28:50

And then

Kyle 28:50

Uh.

Erica 28:51

we decided we're only gonna change it if it's an executive order that's on White house.gov or the Federal Register. If it just exists on truth social, we're not gonna update our numbers.

Kyle 29:02

Yeah, I think that that became a very wise decision for us. Um, and so. I'd like to play before we kind of wrap up here, a little bit of, of devil's advocate. Um, do you think you could maybe talk us through some of the scenarios or if there was any scenario where these tariffs could have worked?

Erica 29:24

That's a really good question because you'll see tariff proponents outside of the administration say. Of course this trade policy didn't work because it changed more than 50 times and it was chaotic and, you know, business uncertainty swamped any of the positive effects that the tariffs could have had. So let's imagine for a moment that instead of, you know, the. Change 50 times tariff policy. We had the Liberation Day policy announced and it stayed in place for the entirety of the year. Um, we had a, let's say we had a, across the board, 10% baseline tariff, higher country specific tariffs, um, higher industry specific tariffs on things like steel and aluminum where the US has said we want to increase production. Would that. Have led to this investment boost and this jobs boost and the$600 billion in in tariff revenue that was promised. There's two distinct arguments that we hear from the tariff proponent camp. one is, as President Trump has sometimes said, foreigners are going to absorb the tariff burden. We are a really large economy. If we put tariff barriers up, foreigners are still gonna wanna sell into the us and so they're gonna lower their prices, they're gonna absorb this tariff burden. Not much is gonna change in the US economy. US consumers won't be affected. If that's true, if that's the case, then tariffs will not deliver the protection that's, that's designed. Uh, the US government will get to raise some revenue, but foreigners will be the ones who are hurt primarily because they'll be lowering their prices to sell into the US market. If that's the case that tariff proponents want to have. Then there is no protection provided because domestic prices aren't going to change. The other option is that yes, we impose tariffs, they increase the relative cost of imported goods. That causes us to substitute towards domestically produced goods, right? Because the foreign good now becomes more expensive, we're gonna shift and buy domestic substitutes that will provide higher profits for those domestic producers. We'll be shifting. We'll be paying higher prices to domestic producers. They'll see higher sales at those higher prices, they will benefit, but that benefit is going to be coming at the expense of others in the US economy who now have to pay higher prices for the same type of good. Um, that indicates. rather than expanding economic activity, tariffs are reallocating and redistributing it. So it's not a story of overall growth, it's a story of rearranging things and in fact rearranging things in a less efficient manner because we would be paying higher prices. To get roughly the same or even less of the good that we were getting before the tariffs went into place. so in that case, you may in fact see some expansion in those protected sectors, but it wouldn't be growth overall. Because if, you know, if an auto manufacturer has to pay more for aluminum, they're not going to be able to produce as much. They're not going to be as competitive with. Say an auto manufacturer in Germany or in Japan or somewhere else that doesn't have to pay that tax on their inputs. Um, so we, we have these two stories. Either foreigners absorb the tariffs and they don't protect, or the tariffs pass through and they protect some, but it comes at the expense of others. In neither case, do we have a new policy regime that revitalizes and grows the US economy. Overall, tariffs are just not the right tool to, to do that, to usher in greater investment overall, greater growth overall.

Kyle 33:13

I think an important part with, with that, that second point is that, as you mentioned, efficiency is that we're not always as a country well suited to produce certain things or to have certain things made other countries, like because of a. Either their environment, their weather, whatever they can import to us, they're designed and set up to provide that to us where we aren't in that same way.

Erica 33:38

Right. That, I mean, that's the whole idea of why trade is beneficial. Different places specialize in different things, and then there are gains from, from trading that, um, if you, if you even look at some of the tariffs that have been in place in a stable fashion under President Trump, that would be like the steel tariffs. Um. And the US has actually had steel tariffs for, for decades, and they've increased substantially under President Trump. There are other things that hold back. Steel investment, like higher energy costs and more and more energy in the US is going towards other things like the AI investment and the AI boom, um, which means we're investing there and not in steel. So all we've gotten for steel tariffs. Is significantly higher. Steel prices. Um, similar story with aluminum, and we can get these things from, from our allies. Um, like we used to import a lot of aluminum from, from Canada. Um, so it's, it's not necessarily even a story of, you know, strategic competition with China because with a lot of these tariffs we're. We're placing them on allies too that we should be relying on and trying to grow our trade with. the, the only other thing that I, I wanna touch on here is with tariffs, um, you also get retaliation. Um, so if we were in a period I think of really stable liberation day type tariffs, we would have seen more stable retaliatory responses. We did see significant retaliation from China. Um. And when China retaliates, they do more than just impose tariffs. Um, they're a, they're a non-market economy, so they can say, we're not gonna import any US soybeans, and they don't import any US soybeans. Um, so it's more than just tariffs on US exports. It's outright bans of importing things from the United States, and that's designed to, you know, exact significant harm on certain sectors. And so we saw, um. big losses in the agriculture sector because of the on, again, off again tariffs. Um, we saw retaliation announced from the eu. Some of that implemented retaliation from Canada. Um, and some of that was also, you know, boycott American, um, American whiskey and other distilled spirits. Um, so. Like there, there are harms to the tariff strategy, um, beyond just the tax increase that is imposed on the US economy because the trade is a two-way street. And so when you put a tax on that, partner on the other end of that exchange is, is like, like going to retaliate.

Kyle 36:08

I think something we need to recap here real quick as we're gonna close out is I'll say that it seems like there were sort of five promises. There's probably way more than that, but let's boil that down to five. Um, the tariffs were not. Reciprocal, really as we discussed, there was no investment. Boom. Uh, we got less revenue than was projected. The debt still rose and prices went up, so I think we kind of went over, we got none, nothing that was promised to happen. Uh, does that seem right, Erica?

Erica 36:44

That seems right. Yep. Yep. Zero for five on on those big promises from Liberation Day.

Kyle 36:51

Yeah. And then when we think about it, I think you know that, that, obviously, you know, our listeners should know that, uh, the tariffs were struck down. Uh, but, but some tariff effects still remain in place. No.

Erica 37:03

Yeah, the, the. The tariffs were almost immediately replaced with a new temporary authority. And right now the Trump administration has investigations covering more than 99% of US imports, and so they are readying the tools to reimpose the Liberation Day tariffs. so, um, let's say that the Liberation Day tariffs were just temporary and never get replaced. There's a lot of research from past episodes of temporary tariffs that the effects linger. Um, the trade relationships that were disrupted by those tariffs do not just snap back overnight. Because it takes years and trust and lot of, um, a lot of work goes into developing trade relationships. And when they're disrupted by a chaotic tariff regime, they cannot just come back like they were before. Um, and I think that's even truer of, of these tariff. Because they violated free trade agreements. Um, they placed the, you know, trustworthiness of the United States as a reliable trade partner overall into question. And so I think there will be a lot more guardedness when it comes to trading with the us, uh, from here on out, and that that imposes a long-term cost.

Kyle 38:20

Yeah, absolutely. It poses a long-term cost on us. Um, and you know, as always it was another cheery tariff episode, but I think it was very educational for the people. And Erica, uh, I thank you so much for being here and on with us. And before we sign off, if you have any burning questions, you can drop a comment here on YouTube. You can email us at podcast@taxfoundation.org. You can slide into our dms on Twitter at Deduction Pod. Thank you for listening.