Laura Barron-Lopez:
They’re very sweeping, Amna. And they’re unprecedented, according to the economists that we talked to, nothing like we have seen in our lifetimes in terms of the scope of the tariffs, especially being exacted on allies like Mexico and Canada.
And I spoke to Erica York, the V.P. of federal tax policy at the Tax Foundation, and she said that these are going to be extremely disruptive because of the fact that these tariffs are on all goods on — to Mexico and Canada. And she and other economists said that they could upend the supply chain relationships that the United States has and that ultimately this is going to have a lot of impact on the American consumer.
I should note that Trump also said there would be future tariffs on the European Union, and should note that some economists believe that targeted tariffs are good. President Biden kept in place a number of President Trump’s first-term tariffs.
But Erica York said that she and her team crunched the numbers at Tax Foundation and that this exact percentage of tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China could cost the average American household an extra $830 a year.
