“The scale of trade barriers proposed by candidate Trump is unprecedented.”
by Eric Boehm
Reason.com
A set of new tariffs proposed by former President Donald Trump would cost the average American family an estimated $1,700 annually—and lower-income households would be hit relatively harder, a new analysis warns.
Trump has called for a 10 percent across-the-board tariff on all imports combined with higher tariffs (potentially as high as 60 percent, he’s claimed) aimed specifically at imports from China. Together, those two policies would cost Americans about $500 billion per year, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE), a trade-focused think tank.
“The scale of trade barriers proposed by candidate Trump is unprecedented,” write PIIE senior fellows Kimberly Clausing and Mary E. Lovely. Thanks to the past several years of higher tariffs under both Trump and President Joe Biden, there is ample empirical evidence about the impact of tariffs, they add.