Source: EconLog
by David Hebert
“Plenty of reputable people have asked the question of what the effective tariff rate is, who actually pays the tariffs, and how many jobs will be created or lost. This is important to the work of gathering (further) evidence of the destructive effects of tariffs. But the decades of empirical, historical, and theoretical work on this front fail to capture the real cost of tariffs. It won’t show up in any BLS report, BEA release, or any other economic report one can imagine. The real cost is the destruction of trust on the world stage.” (02/25/26)