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President Donald Trump’s tariffs are still costing businesses money, and the impact isn’t going away anytime soon. Economists say the trade war he launched is far from over, even though he’s out of office. Prices went up, jobs got cut, and companies struggled to keep up with global competition. Some of these tariffs—like the ones on Chinese goods and raw materials—are still in place, making it clear that reversing them is not as simple as putting them in. Lydia Cox, an economics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, studied the long-term impact of past tariffs and said businesses are still dealing with the fallout from George W. Bush’s steel tariffs two decades ago. “The effects were really widespread,” Cox reportedly told the WSJ. Her research found that even after Bush reversed the tariffs, companies that relied on steel struggled to sell their products overseas. The damage lasted for years. Tariffs raise costs, but industries pay the real price Trump’s tariffs covered an enormous range of goods—everything from beer to planes to washing machines. Unlike previous administrations that imposed tariffs with clear objectives, Trump’s trade policies jumped from one justification to another. Sometimes the tariffs were about protecting American manufacturing. Other times, they were meant to stop drugs and illegal migration. The lack of consistency made it difficult for businesses to plan, and that instability is still a problem. Douglas Irwin, an economics professor at Dartmouth College, said past tariffs usually had a clear demand attached. For example, Ronald Reagan’s tariffs on Japanese semiconductors were designed to protect U.S. technology companies from international competition. Nixon’s temporary tariffs in 1971 were meant to force Japan and West Germany to raise the value of their currencies. Trump’s tariffs, on the other hand, had no single goal. “The problem today is that it’s not…

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Filed under: News - @ March 9, 2025 5:22 pm