Annie Lowrey at The Atlantic goes over the economic consequences of Trump’s tariff policy but suggests that if the Supreme Court rules against Trump that it may right the ship a bit.
But I thought this was actually the most important political observation:
Imagine what the economy would look like right now if Trump had never started the trade war. The Yale Budget Lab estimates that the tariffs have depressed real GDP growth by 0.5 percentage points this year, lifted the unemployment rate by 0.3 percentage points, and cost the economy close to half a million jobs. Moody’s Analytics estimates the hit to real GDP growth to be 0.8 percentage points.
In other words, the Trump administration has likely cut the country’s expansion by a third or more and its annual employment gains in half—for nothing.
Katy Tur asked Rep. Don Bacon why the Republicans have been so willing to let Trump usurp their powers and he said they just wanted to give him running room to fulfill his agenda. Most of them knew it was nonsense but they went along with it anyway. And look what happened.