'50 times worse!' Economist sounds alarm over Trump 2.0 as 'everything we buy is at risk'

University of Michigan Economics Professor Justin Wolfers warned that things are going to be a lot worse than Americans understand as a result of President Donald Trump's tariffs.

Speaking to MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace on Wednesday, Wolfers said the best thing that could happen is that Trump would "back off" his trade war.

Trump ran on tariffs in 2024, but he also ran on them in 2016, he recalled.

"And when he ran on them last time, he used them a little bit more carefully. There were tariffs on steel and aluminum and washing machines. They were all quite destructive, but they're actually small parts of the economy," said Wolfers. "The thing he's done differently this time is he's ratcheted up American tariffs. So, we are easily the highest tariff nation among any leading industrialized country."

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Now, he explained, U.S. tariff rates are roughly 10 times those of trading partners.

"You may have heard of the Depression era Smoot-Hawley tariffs, and there's a funny fact — you have to be an economist to really geek out on this — which is the pain that a tariff causes rises in the square of the tariff rate," Wolfers said. "So what that means is not just that things are bad or worse, they're worse squared. In fact, I did a calculation that suggested the pain that this set of tariffs is going to cause is going to be roughly 50 times larger than the tariffs that Trump imposed in his first term."

When it happened in 2018, "mostly life went on." The only real change was if someone wanted to buy a washing machine. But for Americans going to the grocery store, things were normal.

"But now, realize that everything we buy is at risk. So, next time you go to the grocery store, pick things up off the shelf and have a look at where they're made. Many of them will be made in China. Many of the things that aren't made in China, though, are made maybe in the U.S. using inputs from China. Think about things like, yes, the president makes fun of plastic dolls, but actually, it turns out American Girl dolls also come from China. But more than that, it's strollers. It's toasters, it's equipment."

So, with the 145% tariff Trump imposed on China, family budgets and planning "depend entirely on what happens in the White House."

See his full comments below or at the link here.

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