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Wall Street Blew It

Investors discounted everything Trump has ever said about trade and tariffs. We’re all going to pay for that mistake.

After Thursday’s stock-market sell-off provoked by Donald Trump’s announcement that the United States would be imposing new tariffs on almost every country in the world, the one thing we can say for sure is that Wall Street blew it. It inflicts crushingly high tariffs not only on an obvious target such as China, America’s emerging strategic rival, but also on such countries as Vietnam (which makes much of the clothing and shoes that Americans wear) and Bangladesh, as well as on our allies, the European Union and Japan. As former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers wrote on X, “This is to economics what creationism is to biology, astrology is to astronomy, or RFK thought is to vaccine science.” The Trump formula was silly and deceptive, but it was also a perfect expression of his view that trade deficits are evidence that America is being ripped off.

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