WASHINGTON -- Donald Trump has identified what he sees as an all-purpose fix for what ails America: Slap huge new tariffs on foreign goods entering the United States.The former president and current Republican nominee asserts that tariffs — basically import taxes — will create more factory jobs, shrink the federal deficit, lower food prices and allow the government to subsidize childcare.He even says tariffs can promote world peace.“Tariffs are the greatest thing ever invented,’’ Trump said this month in Flint, Michigan.As president, Trump imposed tariffs with a flourish — targeting imported solar panels, steel, aluminum and pretty much everything from China.“Tariff Man," he called himself.This time, he's gone much further: He has proposed a 60% tariff on goods from China — and a tariff of up to 20% on everything else the United States imports.This week, he raised the ante still higher.To punish the machinery manufacturer John Deere for its plans to move some production to Mexico, Trump vowed to tax anything Deere tried to export back into the United States — at 200%.And he threatened to hit Mexican-made goods with 100% tariffs, a move that would risk blowing up a trade deal that Trump's own administration negotiated with Canada and Mexico.Mainstream economists are generally skeptical of tariffs, considering them a mostly inefficient way for governments to raise money and promote prosperity.
They are especially alarmed by Trump’s latest proposed tariffs.This week, a report from the Peterson Institute for International Economics concluded that Trump’s main tariff proposals – assuming that the targeted countries retaliated with their own tariffs — would slash more than a percentage point off the U.S.economy by 2026 and make inflation 2 percentage points higher next year than it otherwise would have been.Vice President Kamala Harris has dismissed Trump’s tariff threats as unserious.
Her campaign has cited a report that found that Trump’s...