Tariffs are taxes imposed by a country on foreign goods that are imported for domestic use. Theoretically speaking, they have two important uses:

–they can punish a company that sells goods in a foreign land at below its cost of production, in order to gain market share and/or damage local firms, and

–they can defend an important nascent local industry from competition while it builds itself to scale.

The reality is somewhat different.

Take the US auto industry. There have been import barriers put in place by Washington that have raised the domestic price of foreign-built cars for at least a half century. During that time, however, the market share of GM has shrunk by 2/3, from about half the domestic market to 17% or so, …with bankruptcy in 2009 along the way.

Then there were the Trump tariffs put in place to raise the cost of agricultural exports to China. The internet says Washington took in a total of $69 billion, $61 billion of which went to farmers damaged by the levies. China redirected its purchases of soybeans, for example, to countries like Brazil, which have been the (only?) winners from Trump’s actions. In 2017, Brazil exported about 25% more soybeans than the US. Last year, Brazil’s exports were double those of the US.

in the aggregate, Trump tariffs are estimated to have lost the US over 100,000 jobs and about 0.2% in GDP. Given that the trend rate of growth of real domestic GDP is a bit less than 1%, that’s a serious decline. The internet is guessing that the new tariffs Trump is saying he’ll levy if reelected will lower domestic GDP by .8%–meaning essentially no growth at all–and a loss of maybe 700,000 jobs.

No wonder Russian influencers are pushing his candidacy.