Liberation Day has come and gone. The White House Rose Garden is quiet. They’ve packed up the flags, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s chart and the freebie MAGA hats. All we have to do now is wait and see how the economy will respond.
The early reviews of President Donald Trump’s tariff announcement haven’t been great. Stock prices buckled in after-market trading as investors reckoned how a universal 10 percent tariff and “reciprocal” levies on dozens of other countries will ripple across the global economy. The effective tariff rate for the U.S. is poised to climb even higher than it was under the Smoot-Hawley regime of the 1930s, which — if you need a reminder — kicked off a global trade war and weakened growth in the early years of the Great Depression.
