President Donald Trump’s fixation with tariffs is reminiscent of the Democrats’ self-destructive crusade to pass the Inflation Reduction Act under former President Joe Biden. The Left treated the partisan spending bill as a moral imperative, even though honest economists across the spectrum warned that dumping hundreds of billions of dollars into a hot economy would come with a heavy cost. And more than any other policy or position, one suspects, it was inflation and the resulting economic uncertainty that hurt Democrats most over the past four years.

It is not an exaggeration to say virtually no economist in the country believes tariffs are good for Americans.