President Donald Trump speaks during an event to announce new tariffs, April 2, 2025, in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)
Six months after the US rolled out its high-profile tariffs, Harvard Economics Professor and former IMF Chief Economist Gita Gopinath says the verdict is clear and negative. “It is 6 months since Liberation Day tariffs. What have US tariffs accomplished?” she asked in a post on social media platform X.
According to Gopinath, the Government revenue is significantly high, but almost entirely borne by US firms and consumers, essentially acting as a tax. At the same time, inflation is also slightly higher overall, with notable spikes in appliances, furniture, and coffee. Trade balance has shown no signs of improvement, and US manufacturing has no signs of a boost, she said.
“Overall, the score card is negative,” Gopinath remarked.
Gita Gopinath’s post on X.
Donald Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs
On April 2, US President Donald Trump imposed high tariffs of up to 50% on countries like India and Brazil, including a staggering 100% tariff on imports of branded and patented pharmaceutical drugs, aiming to boost American manufacturing and improve the trade balance. The president, who said the tariffs were designed to boost domestic manufacturing, used aggressive rhetoric to describe a global trade system that the United States helped to build after World War II, saying “our country has been looted, pillaged, raped and plundered” by other nations.
Trump has claimed that his tariffs, income tax cuts, and aggressive courting of CEOs, financiers, tech leaders, and world leaders, including prime ministers and presidents, have generated $17 trillion in new investments. According to him, this sum is intended to fund new factories, technologies, jobs, higher incomes, and faster economic growth.
“Under eight months of Trump, we’ve already secured commitments of $17 trillion coming in,” the president said in a speech last month. “There’s never been any country that’s done anything like that.”
However, the White House didn’t lay out the math as to how Trump calculated $17 trillion in investment commitments. The White House website lists total investments at $8.8 trillion, though that figure appears to be padded with some investment commitments made during Joe Biden’s presidency, AP reported.
(With AP inputs)