The Trump Tariff Tracker: How severe is the pain?
By Heather Long and Christopher Ingraham
July 6 at 9:07 AM
As of Friday, many trade and economic experts now say President Trump has catapulted the United States into a trade war — and they see no sign of it ending soon.
There's no formal definition of what constitutes a trade war, but the escalating exchange of trade barriers between the United States and its trading partners has hit a point where most economists say there will be a negative impact. Companies will scale back on investments, growth will slow, consumers will pay more for some items, and there could be more job losses. The Federal Reserve warned Thursday some companies are already scaling back or postponing plans.
Trump isn't the only one inflicting the pain. He's put tariffs on all five of the top U.S. trading partners: China, Canada, Mexico, the European Union and Japan, and all but Japan have countered with tariffs on U.S. products. These nations know the U.S. economy is the biggest in the world and can withstand some hits, so they targeted their actions to hurt vulnerable communities, especially in the American Midwest, that voted for Trump.
The United States imposed the first duties on $34 billion in Chinese goods early Friday, and China immediately retaliated with levies on an equal amount of American goods, including staples such as soybeans, corn, pork and poultry.
“This clearly a dark day for consumers,” said Bernard Baumohl, chief global economist at the Economic Outlook Group. “What appears to be a full-blown trade war will boomerang and hurt the U.S. economy.”
The tally so far: Tariffs on $85 billion
In total, Trump has now put hefty tariffs on $85 billion worth of imports: solar panels, washing machines, steel, aluminum and a hodgepodge of Chinese products. Other nations have responded with similar tariffs, bringing the total hit so far in the global trade war to $165 billion, according to Chad Bown of the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
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