Donald Trump, who won in part due to inflation that peaked two years ago, campaigned on a policy of making everything from vegetables to televisions more expensive, suggesting a plurality of voters either did not understand tariffs — and the rippling economic impact of raising taxes on imported goods — or simply did not believe the Republican candidate would follow through.
In a Monday evening post on Truth Social, the president-elect reaffirmed that yeah, he’s serious.
“On January 20th, as one of my many first Executive Orders, I will sign all necessary documents to charge Mexico and Canada a 25% Tariff on ALL products coming into the United States, and its ridiculous Open Borders,” the 78-year-old wrote, falsely implying the taxes will be paid by exporting countries and not American consumers. In a separate post, he added that “we will be charging China an additional 10% Tariff, above any additional Tariffs, on all their many products coming into the United States of America.”
Ostensibly, these taxes are part of the war on drugs and the war on migrants: Trump blames China and America’s closest neighbors for allowing fentanyl and asylum-seekers to come across the border, claiming his tariffs will end only when “Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this invasion of our Country!”
If Trump’s boast is true, American consumers will immediately see an impact — if not at the border, at least at Best Buy and their local grocer.
“Enjoy your cheap avocados and electronics while you can,” commented Masha Krupenkin, a political scientist at Boston College.
“Donald Trump’s first act as president will be to intentionally *raise* prices for the American people,” added Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va.
That’s not speculation or simple partisanship in action. Even if Trump purports not to grasp how tariffs work — ask yourself: if he was charged a tax, would he pass the cost along to consumers or accept lower profits for himself, personally? — the question of import levies and their impact has certainly been considered by those they would impact.
A study recently commissioned by the National Retail Federation, a trade group, found that Trump unilaterally imposing new taxes on imported goods would dramatically inflate costs and potentially devastate the economy. Indeed, Walmart is already saying it'll have to raise prices.
“Consumers would pay $13.9 billion to $24 billion more for apparel; $8.8 billion to $14.2 billion more for toys; $8.5 billion to $13.1 billion more for furniture; $6.4 billion to $10.9 billion more for household appliances; $6.4 billion to $10.7 billion more for footwear, and $2.2 billion to $3.9 billion more for travel goods,” the study found. Overall, Americans could see their spending power diminished by $46 billion to $78 billion.
In March, the Center for American Progress Action Fund also released an analysis that found Trump’s tariffs would amount to a $1,500 tax increase for the average U.S. household — and that was assuming a 10% tariff, less than half of what the president-elect has now proposed on goods from America’s leading trade partners.
Neither study accounts for the potentially cascading effects of tariffs. Housing will become even more expensive as the costs of imported materials skyrocket, for example. Consumers may have no choice but to pay higher prices for necessities, but they may also decide to buy less overall; manufacturers who rely on cheap parts from China may find their customers are unwilling to pay twice the price. In such a scenario, the U.S. is not only facing inflation but a contracting national economy and rising unemployment.
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As the nonpartisan Tax Foundation notes, Trump’s proposed tariffs have been subjected to no fewer than a dozen macroeconomic analyses, all of which “consistently find” that they “would have a negative impact on the United States economy. They would also invite corruption, the foundation observed: an analysis of tariffs during Trump’s first term found that companies “that made political donations to Republican candidates were more likely to be granted tariff exemptions than firms that gave to Democrats.”
It’s hard to say Trump will abandon tariffs due to their obvious and negative economic cost when they enable him, personally, to pick winners and losers in the U.S. economy. But the president-elect is also a self-styled master negotiator who perhaps does not want to actually tank the stock market but instead use the threat of tariffs to exact pledges he can claim as victories.
Dean Baker, an economist at the Center for Economic Research, speculates that Trump, “or at least someone with his ear,” presumably knows that Americans are not clamoring for higher prices. “That means that Trump does not actually want his import taxes on goods from Canada and Mexico to take effect,” he wrote on Bluesky. “Instead, he is looking to make a deal (you know Trump, the expert dealmaker), where [Canada's] Trudeau and [Mexico's] Sheinbaum pledge to crack down on fentanyl and migrants, kind of like they are already doing.”
But if Trump imposes tariffs on day one, that leaves exactly no time to negotiate before Americans begin seeing prices rise. Before diplomacy, there could well be a trade war, as Canada, Mexico and China impose their own taxes in retaliation and thus reduce the demand for U.S. exports.
Eswar Prasad, an economist at Cornell University, told The New York Times that we should not assume Trump is bluffing. Tariffs, like mass deportations, were a central selling point of his campaign, however economically destructive, and he has shown no sign of pivoting thus far.
“The increasing specificity of Trump’s tariff threats,” he said, “both in terms of the amounts and the countries to be targeted, indicates the strong possibility that these are looming actions rather than just blustery threats.”
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