Hey, experts admit what you got so wrong on Trumps tariffs

Economists across the political spectrum predicted that President Donald Trump’s trade negotiations would end in disaster.Now that his Aug.1 deadline has passed without the sky falling — and with multiple advantageous deals completed — it’s time to seriously reevaluate the flawed arguments the experts made against his strategy.Many, it turns out, made basic errors in economic reasoning.On the left, Nobel laureate and Columbia professor Joseph Stiglitz declared in January that Trump’s policy was “very bad for America and for the world,” while University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers called it “impressively destructive.”On the right, prominent free-market advocates like George Mason’s Donald Boudreaux also voiced strong opposition.Yet their arguments against tariffs revealed a fundamental misunderstanding: They decried tariffs as uniquely harmful, while ignoring that the same logic applies to all taxes.Take the common critique that tariffs, as a tax on trade, reduce trade overall.Phil Gramm and Larry Summers — one conservative, one liberal — jointly argued that tariffs “distort domestic production” by pushing resources toward less efficient uses.

They warned tariffs would slow economic growth.That’s true.But every tax, including sales taxes and income taxes, discourages trade, distorts production and reduces growth.Sales taxes lower consumption.

Income taxes discourage work.Corporate taxes deter investment.All taxes distort the economy — tariffs are no exception.Another frequent claim is that tariffs hurt consumers.

Again, true — just as all taxes do.Logically, opposing tariffs simply because they raise prices and reduce growth means we should oppose all taxes.But unless we abolish government spending — which stands at $7 trillion this year — we need taxes of some kind.That’s why economists usually argue for minimizing the total economic damage that all taxes cause across the board.Distortions increase as tax rates do...