“Chaos.” “Destructive.” “A big hit to people’s pocketbooks.”
That’s what the economy will look like under a second Trump administration, according to three economists across the policy spectrum, if the GOP presidential candidate enacts the two major policies he’s promising on the campaign trail: huge tariffs and mass deportations.
Americans will face higher prices and product shortages from the tariffs, they say, while consumer spending will suffer and jobs remain unfilled, harming local economies dependent on immigrants.
‘Empty warehouses and empty shelves’
On the stump, the former president has called for a 60% tariff on Chinese imports along with a blanket 10% to 20% on all remaining goods imported from other countries. This is an escalation of what Trump imposed during his first term, when his tariffs affected some $300 billion in imported goods — some of which Biden has not rolled back — according to Wendy Edelberg, a senior fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution, a centrist think tank.
“Imagine that happening to 10 times that amount of economic activity,” Edelberg said, noting that equals $3 trillion in imported goods. “What you’re going to see is chaos.”ARTICLE HERE