A year ago today, President Donald Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs, taxes on Americans that constantly changed, seemingly at the presidential whim. Since then, they have raised prices for everyone, increased costs for domestic manufacturers, and unleashed a wave of uncertainty across an economy that had been recovering from the Biden years.
During the first few months of Trump’s second term, the economy added about 80,000 jobs a month. This was not a record-setting pace, but still positive, especially considering that, thanks to Trump’s mass deportation policies, the number of workers in the country was shrinking.
Then Liberation Day happened.
Since then, job growth has not only stalled but has gone into reverse. There are now 19,000 fewer jobs in the economy than a year ago, when Trump launched his tariff war, and there is every reason to believe that the tariffs and the uncertainty they caused are to blame.
Elected on a promise to lower prices, Trump’s tariffs did the opposite. Trump may claim that foreign corporations pay the cost of tariffs, but that is as nonsensical as Democrats claiming that higher corporate taxes are borne by corporations. It is consumers who ultimately pay for higher corporate taxes through higher prices, and they also pay for tariffs in much the same way. Estimates vary, but the average household paid between $500 and $2,000 more due to higher prices under Trump’s tariffs.
They have hardly helped domestic manufactures, either, which was their supposed purpose. Trump seems to have forgotten that most American manufacturers rely on imported components to produce their final products. According to the National Association of Manufacturers, 80% of manufacturers, including 72% of small manufacturers and 97% of large manufacturers, reported paying higher prices for inputs thanks to tariffs. Rather than protecting and nurturing domestic industry, tariffs have often functioned as a tax on production, making American goods more expensive to produce.
Then there is the constant uncertainty that Trump’s particular brand of tariffs has produced. The president has made more than a dozen major policy changes to his Liberation Day tariffs, raising rates on some products, lowering them on others, exempting some countries, and further punishing others. As Thomas Hasler, CEO of construction supplier Sika, put it, “Everything started to slow down” after Trump’s tariffs. Projects that had been expected to launch were “put on the back burner” as businesses waited for clarity before making investment and supply-chain decisions.
The beginning of Trump’s second term was chaotic enough — between DOGE, the One Big Beautiful Bill, and mass deportations — even though many of the policies were, on an individual basis, highly welcome. Big changes were needed from the Biden administration, and Trump delivered change, but perhaps too much when it came to tariffs. As the Washington Examiner has detailed, the worst of the price increases from Trump’s tariff regime is now behind us, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t hurt as they were working their way through the economy.
DEMOCRATS KEEP CHOOSING ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS OVER AMERICANS
The uncertainty surrounding Trump’s tariff regime persists. After losing at the Supreme Court, Trump replaced his Liberation Day tariffs with a temporary global import surcharge under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, initially set at 10% and then raised to 15%. The legality of these tariffs is disputable and could lead to more uncertainty.
A year on, Liberation Day stands as the clearest evidence that Trump’s second term has at times confused disruption with success. Tariffs did not revive American industry or ease family budgets. They raised costs, froze investment, and left the economy weaker, less confident, and more uncertain than it needed to be.
