Global Tariffs Are Back. Did They Ever Really Leave?

Last Friday, I joined on The Fourcast, alongside the FT’s . She’s one of the sharpest folks in the world on tariffs and trade policy, and I learn a lot whenever I hear from her. As you might guess, our task was to talk through the latest chapter in America’s never-ending 24/7 tariff saga.

The latest iteration of Trump’s zombie tariffs cover nearly 99% of US imports — this time justified by the president’s sudden, deeply touching concern for forced labor around the world. While there’s not really any evidence that most of the countries the President is tariffing actually use forced labor, they’re being accused of not adequately policing it in their own imports — something that’s nearly impossible for any country to fully enforce.

The real giveaway that these tariffs aren’t about forced labor at all is their design: Countries judged “really bad” get a 12.5% tariff, while the “merely bad” get 10%. A 2.5%-point spread is hardly an incentive to reform — it’s a legal costume, and every world leader knows it.

Yes, we’ve dug into the logic of “forced labor” tariffs that aren’t really about forced labor before…

Here’s your chance for a refresher:

While the legal rationale for this latest set of tariffs borders on the absurd (or rather, sails right past it), the consequences are far less funny. By the administration’s own stated goals, these tariffs are failing: the trade deficit has barely budged, there’s no manufacturing boom, and it’s Americans footing the bill.

But the greatest damage probably isn’t in any of those numbers — it’s in the chaos itself. A tariff that’s on Monday, off Tuesday, and back on Wednesday is Schrödinger’s trade policy: simultaneously in force and enjoined until someone opens the Federal Register. No CFO in history has approved a billion dollar plant on the basis of a tariff regime likely to be relitigated, renegotiated, and reinvented before the concrete has been poured. It doesn’t even do the one thing a bad tax can usually be relied on to do, which…