Eve is here. Republicans don’t seem to have gotten the memo that most Americans understand that tariffs are hurting them. G. Elliott Morris wrote:
In other words, by doubling tariffs, President Trump is further enforcing policies that a vast majority of Americans disapprove of. If “Customs Man” were a presidential candidate, he would lose in the Electoral College by a larger margin than Michael Dukakis in 1988.
However, for The Hill:
President Trump’s staunchest allies, led by Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), are already pushing ahead with plans to pass legislation under a special budget reconciliation process that would allow tariffs to be raised with a simple majority vote to shore up Trump’s troubled trade policies.
Fortunately, some Republican senators are healthier.
But raising tariffs with a simple majority, rather than the 60 votes typically needed to pass controversial legislation in the Senate, is sure to run into opposition from Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and other Republicans who criticize President Trump’s global trade war…
Other conservatives, such as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), have said they are highly skeptical of any effort to permanently set higher tariffs…
Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) also praised the Supreme Court’s decision denying President Trump’s use of emergency powers to impose tariffs.
Before turning to Mr. Jomo’s article to see how the tariffs failed to achieve their promised goals, apart from raising some revenue (but not enough to impact the deficit), Paul Krugman echoed this sentiment. From “Zombie Tariff Attack”
On Liberation Day, President Trump justified the now-illegal tariffs by telling Americans that the U.S. trade deficit was proof that the U.S. was giving money to other countries. At a ranking press conference after the Supreme Court ruling, he justified his actions by saying:
Look at the deficits we had with some of these countries. What they gained over the decades was shameful.
His trade deficit economics is fundamentally flawed. But apart from that, tariffs have not reduced these deficits. In fact, the U.S. trade deficit for all of 2025 was about the same as in 2024….
President Trump also claimed that the tariffs would revive U.S. manufacturing. In fact, manufacturing employment has declined since Liberation Day. But in that press conference, Trump assured that great things would happen.
We will begin to see the results in a year’s time, when all of the factories currently under construction are operational. You can see that all the construction numbers are very good.
What numbers does he have in mind? The latest available data on manufacturing construction shows construction is down thanks to President Trump cutting off Biden’s green energy subsidies.
:
Jomo Kwame Sundaram, a former professor of economics, served as the United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development and received the Vasily Leontief Award and the Kuhanita Bai Karaiselvan Award for advancing the frontiers of economic thought. Originally published on Jomo’s website
President Donald Trump has shaken up the global economy and the international rule of law in the first year of his second term — ostensibly to make America great again, especially by bringing back American manufacturing jobs.
The president inherits from the U.S. Congress the power to wage war, levy taxes, conclude treaties, set the budget, and regulate federal-state relations.
customs duty
The tariffs President Trump imposed on Emancipation Day, April 2, 2025, were ostensibly a primary measure to create manufacturing jobs.
When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned his ruling on February 20, he responded by imposing a 10% tariff on all imports, increasing it to 15% the next day.
Tariffs are a blatant measure to restore American manufacturing jobs. The policy assumes that U.S. manufacturing jobs are being lost primarily to what the White House deems “unfair” competition from cheaper imports.
Undoubtedly, US and other multinational corporations are relocating production and generally sourcing imports from abroad to reduce import costs.
Imposing tariffs on imported goods to raise prices is believed to induce manufacturers to move production and jobs to the United States.
Higher tariffs were imposed on countries with large goods trade surpluses with the United States. This ignores the services trade balance, which is generally more favorable to the United States.
Tariff threats are now one of the Trump administration’s weapons of choice, or economic coercion tools, including sanctions, to advance and secure its interests.
revenue
The president requested trillions of dollars in additional tariff revenue from foreign exporters to the Treasury Department to fund a massive military spending increase.
But just $264 billion was raised in the first year of Trump 2.0, far more than before but still less than 1% of the U.S. federal debt.
Customs revenue peaked at $31.35 billion in October 2025, months before the Supreme Court ruling, but was well below expectations.
The Kiel Institute for the World Economy found that only 4% of the tariffs were “absorbed”, with foreign exporters losing a portion of their export earnings. U.S. importers paid the remaining 96%, or $264 billion, in tariffs, weakening the effect of President Trump’s business tax cuts.
But President Trump’s tariffs did not reduce the U.S. trade deficit, not even for manufacturing. This increased to $1 trillion in 2025, as imports of $3.15 trillion exceeded exports of $2.15 trillion.
Although interest rates on mortgages and loans have not fallen, inflation continues. The additional tariff revenue would not even cover the additional military spending promised by President Trump.
Congress could have taken back tariff authority, but the current House of Representatives, with President Trump in its majority, has not attempted to do so.
But with November’s midterm elections looming, fewer people are convinced that curbing inflation is a priority for the administration, with the president’s disapproval rating rising to 55% in mid-February, Forbes reported.
financialization
The United States’ federal debt, approximately $39 trillion, currently requires more than $1 trillion in annual debt service payments out of an annual budget of $7 trillion.
This unrepayable debt is growing by $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion each year and is being “rolled over” with increasingly shorter maturities. Hedge funds now hold 27% of U.S. Treasuries, while foreigners, who held half in 2015, now own only 30%.
Treasury repurchase agreements, or repurchase agreements, provide approximately $4 trillion in funding for derivatives speculation each day. Another financial crisis could wipe out trillions more, often of dubious “value.”
Various bubbles of unpayable debt are rapidly growing while the U.S. economy, productive employment, and research funding are declining. To make matters worse, so-called stablecoins and cryptocurrencies are infiltrating financial markets.
Meanwhile, mortgage delinquency rates in some parts of the United States have reached levels worse than in 2007-08. By the end of 2025, financial news agencies were publishing ominous reports on financial vulnerabilities.
Hundreds of billions in promised investments forced from other countries through tariffs and other threats will be invested in U.S. financial asset markets, but few manufacturing jobs will be created.
revival of manufacturing industry
President Trump has promised to make the United States a manufacturing powerhouse again and lead the world in technology, computing power, and military weapons. However, China has led in many, if not most, areas of recent technological advancement.
Dean Baker pointed out that the US labor market has weakened in the first year of Trump 2.0. Both overall and manufacturing job growth declined from last year under the Biden administration.
U.S. manufacturing jobs have long been threatened by the globalization of multinational corporations and changes in labor-saving technologies, particularly automation.
U.S. policy in recent decades has left the responsibility for ensuring America’s industrial technology leadership and advancement in the private sector. On the other hand, problems such as poor infrastructure remain unresolved.
President Trump’s tariffs could also unintentionally reduce U.S. jobs. Many industrial processes require imported parts, and tariffs have proven to be devastating.
President Trump’s policies are not creating enough manufacturing jobs. The president fired the Labor Department’s statistics chief in mid-2025 for not reporting sufficient job growth.
Despite this, the US reported only 584,000 net new jobs for all of 2025, compared to 1.6 million net new jobs in 2024, out of a U.S. workforce of 165 million.
The Wall Street Journal noted that “the manufacturing boom promised by President Trump…is reversing.”
The Trump administration could still use the Supreme Court’s decision to change its Make America Great Again strategy by drawing better lessons from America’s economic history and adopting a more pragmatic approach. But for now, that seems unlikely.
