“I love tariffs,” President Trump has said. “My favorite word is ‘tariff.’”
Thanks to the tariffs he has imposed on about 90 countries, he claims, “we’re becoming rich as hell. … And when we finish this out, there’ll never be any wealth like what we have.” The United States has “already solved inflation, we’ve solved prices,” Trump maintains as well.
A substantial majority of Americans do not agree.
In a poll taken in August by the Pew Research Center, 61 percent of respondents did not approve of Trump’s tariff policies. And 55 percent indicated the levies will have a negative impact on them, their families and the country.
Americans have good reason to be concerned. Far from becoming “rich as hell,” the federal government is in a deep financial hole. This year, spending increased by $391 billion; the $1.9 trillion deficit is the third largest in U.S. history. The total national debt tops $37 trillion, a number which, following passage of the administration’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” is virtually certain to increase by trillions. Tariff revenues have not and cannot make more than a small dent in these deficits.
At 17.4 percent, the Trump tariff rate is at its highest since 1935. Tariffs are the principal reason inflation is higher now than it was when Trump began his second term in January. This year, tariffs will, on average, cost each household about $2,300. Price increases include a 10 percent levy on wood and lumber and 25 percent on kitchen cabinets, upholstered furniture and bathroom vanities, set to go into effect on Oct. 14. The added costs are likely to slow the construction of affordable residential housing, which is already out of reach for many buyers and renters.
The tariffs have upended supply chains. Apple has moved iPhone assembly plants from China to India. Stellantis N.V. paused production in North America because of price hikes in automotive components. To evade tariffs, China has moved some manufacturing and assembly operations to other countries.
Applied to friends as well as foes, at times without a discernible justification or, as with Brazil, out of personal or partisan animus, the tariffs have antagonized Canadians, Mexicans, Japanese, Australians and members of the European Union. China is courting leaders around the world who have been stung by the Trump tariffs.
Ironically, the tariff war has also undermined the domestic manufacturing and agrarian sectors of the economy Trump promised to protect and promote.
China’s zeroing out of its multibillion-dollar purchases of American soybeans, the largest agricultural product exported by the United States, caused prices to plummet to $9 per bushel. John Deere & Company attributes much of its projected 26 percent drop in net income to reduced spending by farmers on machinery and price increases in aluminum and steel. Trucking companies have suffered as well from the decline in agricultural exports.
“Farmers … are, for a little while, going to be hurt until the tariffs kick into their benefit,” Trump has declared. And so, the administration, which distributed $23 billion to them during the trade wars in his first term, is now preparing a bailout in the neighborhood of $35-50 billion.
Already reeling from higher prices for fertilizers and equipment and the potentially permanent loss of markets, farmers are apoplectic about reports that the administration is working out details of a $20 billion aid package to Argentina, which comes on the heels of that country’s replacement of the United States as the major supplier of soybeans to China. Scarcely part of an America First agenda, what Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent calls a “credit swap line,” appears to be a lifeline to Argentina’s embattled libertarian president, Javier Milei, an ardent supporter of Donald Trump.
The CEOs of General Motors, Ford and Stellantis NV recently projected that tariffs will cost their companies $4.5 billion, $2 billion and $1.7 billion, respectively, in revenues, and that production levels would not rebound until 2027. In an apparent attempt to placate them and prevent potential buyers of cars and trucks from sticker shock, the Trump administration is reportedly close to a deal that would spare vehicles assembled in the U.S. from tariffs.
This move was an about-face by a president who imposed an import tax on Mexican vehicles in July 2025 that exceeded the rate on all other countries except China, undermining the USMCA treaty he had signed with Mexico and Canada in 2020 and praised as “the largest fairest, most balanced and modern trade agreement ever achieved.”
Whether Trump has the authority to, in essence, take over tariff policy is in dispute. The Constitution grants Congress the power to impose tariffs. Legislation in the 20th century allowed the president to levy tariffs to address threats to national security and unfair trade practices, but the Supreme Court has indicated that this delegation of powers must include “intelligible principles” that limit the president’s actions.
The Supreme Court is likely to weigh in on tariffs in the coming months. Whatever the high court decides, however, it should be clear that using tariffs as a blunt instrument of global domination actually does substantial damage to America’s international reputation, national interests and economy, as well as to its manufacturers, retailers and consumers.
Glenn C. Altschuler is The Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Emeritus Professor of American Studies at Cornell University.
