You may have noticed that for the last few months, talks of tariffs seem to have settled down. Of course, part of the driving force behind this comparative silence is that days feel like weeks, weeks feel like months, and months feel like years in our world of Trumpian news cycles, fueled by world-changing events that provide far juicier topics for politicians and media alike. After all, who is going to bother reporting on future systems of trade with all of those boring numbers and charts when we can have a nationwide panic over what turned out to be the shortest World War in history?
But the main reason for the weeks of seemingly tariff-free calm we’ve enjoyed was Trump’s decision to announce a 90-day pause in his entirely voluntary trade war with the entire world. The problem? These 90 days are now up, and we are about to witness the return of more tariff chaos.
