Tariffs - Trump's latest deranged policy
3 April 2025
What is the likelihood that the tariffs President Trump issued will be in place 5 years from now? The answer is close to zero. Either Trump will change his mind, which he does regularly or he will not be in office and his successor will change the tariffs.
Why would a CEO make a major investment that takes 5+ years to put into operation to take advantage of a policy that will no longer be in effect? The answer is, of course, that a rational CEO will not. Some CEOs will try to placate Trump by making supportive statements so that he is less likely to penalize them in some way but they are unlikely to waste too much time or money on this effort. This is likely also true for major investments that take only 1-2 years to put into operation.
Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo points out that building and establishing a new plant in the U.S. will take a minimum of three to five years even if investors are inclined to support one, but Victoria Guida reported in Politico that corporate executives are saying they cannot invest in manufacturing until they can project costs, and Trump is far too unpredictable to enable them to do that with any confidence. Source.
As a former CEO for 20+ years, I know that management makes major changes based on a vision of the future that is likely to persist. But Trump operates based on chaos and unpredictability so there is no stable vision of the future.
More on tariffs: The biggest upward redistribution of wealth in history is coming soon. Trump’s tariffs will especially hurt lower-income Americans, while his tax cuts will especially benefit the wealthy. By Robert Reich
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