Here Are the Smartest Economic Takes on Trump’s Tariffs

President Donald Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs on April 2 — and people have been reacting as global markets take a hammering.

Here’s what big names in business and economics have been saying:

Business Roundtable

Joshua Bolten, the CEO of Business Roundtable, an association that represents more than 200 CEOs, said in a statement the tariffs “run the risk of causing major harm to American manufacturers, workers, families and exporters.” He added: “Damage to the US economy will increase the longer the tariffs are in place and may be exacerbated by retaliatory measures.”

He said the Business Roundtable “supports President Trump’s goal of securing better and fairer trade deals with our trading partners” but called on him to introduce “additional reasonable exemptions” and a “transparent, predictable exclusion process.”

Larry Summers

“Never before has an hour of Presidential rhetoric cost so many people so much,” Larry Summers, a former Treasury secretary, wrote on X. “The best estimate of the loss from tariff policy is now closer to $30 trillion.”

Summers added that the tariffs were the most expensive and “masochistic” the US had imposed in decades.

Mohamed El-Erian

“The price action in global financial markets in the immediate aftermath of the US tariff announcement points to major worries about global economic growth,” Mohamed El-Erian, the former CEO of bond giant PIMCO and the chief economic advisor at Allianz, said on X.

Mariana Mazzucato

“These tariffs will cause inflation in the United States; they will cause lower consumer power of US workers. The estimates are between $1,700 to $5,000 per family in terms of the costs of these tariffs,” Mariana Mazzucato, an economics professor at University College London, told ITV’s “Peston” program.

Boaz Weinstein

Boaz Weinstein, Saba Capital Management’s founder, doesn’t expect Trump to change course, posting on X: “I’m often wrong, but I don’t see him doing a u-turn. This is not a buy-the-dip opportunity. It’s a sell the dip opportunity.”

David Rosenberg

“So, this tariff file is now being labeled ‘Make America Wealthy Again’? What is with that adverb ‘again’ which is defined as ‘returning to a previous condition’? The previous condition, I can tell you, was not nearly as good as the current condition, seeing as US net national net worth just reached a record level of $157 TRILLION (a cool $1.2 million per household … too bad we don’t all live at the average!),” David Rosenberg, the founder and president of Rosenberg Research & Associates, said on X.

“Have tariffs really stood in the way of wealth creation in America? I think the title should simply be the truth: ‘Let’s Make the World Poor Again’ (and then we can buy it at a discount),” Rosenberg added.

Nouriel Roubini

Nouriel Roubini, a professor emeritus of the NYU Stern School of Business, said the “Liberation Day” label was “Orwellian doublespeak.”

“Whatever the consequences of these tariffs will be — ie lower growth and higher inflation and how much of it depending on the eventual size of these tariffs post-negotiations that will be ugly and long-drawn. There is absolutely no ‘liberation’ at all in them: not for US consumers, workers and businesses, let alone for the rest of the world,” he said on X.

Paul Krugman

“I guess it’s just possible that when we get details about the Trump tariffs they will be lower than what he just announced, but based on what he said, he’s gone full-on crazy,” Paul Krugman, a Nobel Memorial Prize-winning economist and former MIT and Princeton University professor, wrote in his Substack newsletter.

“If you had any hopes that Trump would step back from the brink, this announcement, between the very high tariff rates and the complete falsehoods about what other countries do, should kill them,” Krugman added.

Howard Silverblatt

“March continued with President Trump’s rapid executive orders and policy changes, as tariffs (along with their potential impact on the economy), inflation, employment and consumer spending became the main concerns of the market, which pulled back with increased trading on strong negative breadth,” wrote Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst of S&P Dow Jones Indices, in a S&P Global column.

“Adding to the concern were Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) government employment reductions, as well as US layoffs, which have increased (along with retail warnings),” he added.

The Yale Budget Lab

“The price level from all 2025 tariffs rises by 2.3% in the short-run, the equivalent of an average per household consumer loss of $3,800 in 2024$. Annual losses for households at the bottom of the income distribution are $1,700,” wrote the Yale Budget Lab in a new analysis published on April 2, shortly after Trump’s blanket tariff announcement.

Jared Bernstein

“True, the United States is a large and dominant country. And it is a relatively closed country, meaning we depend less on trade than most other countries,” said Jared Bernstein, former chief economist, in his newsletter. “That means, as Trump has correctly argued, we can hurt them more than they can hurt us. He fails to give a coherent rationale for why we need to start a trade war with Canada, Mexico, Japan, Europe, and other traditionally reliable trading partners.”

“First, though they’ve been explicitly cavalier about the pain they’re causing, higher inflation, slower growth, lower investment, falling stock prices — as of this moment, the Dow is down 1,200 points — and higher recession chances could force them to recant. But, at least so far, that may have been the way of Trump 1; it’s not the way of Trump 2,” he added.

Justin Wolfers

“Monstrously destructive, incoherent, ill-informed tariffs based on fabrications, imagined wrongs, discredited theories and ignorance of decades of evidence. And the real tragedy is that they will hurt working Americans more than anyone else,” said Justin Wolfers, economics professor at University of Michigan and public policy scholar, on BlueSky.

Daryl Fairweather

“If these tariffs were more targeted and on specific goods, I wouldn’t be so sure we would have stagflation. But these appear to be extremely broad, so I expect higher inflation and lower or even negative economic growth,” said Daryl Fairweather, Redfin chief economist, on BlueSky.

“Home construction was already going to be weak this year, but these tariffs (combined with labor problems from immigration policy) will mean fewer homes built,” she added.

Bill Gross

The latest set of tariffs is “a similar event to going off the gold standard in 1971. It’s an epic event. It’s not something where you can time quickly for a market bottom. It’s something that we’re going to have to live with as long as President Trump continues with this stance,” Bill Gross, the cofounder of Pimco, told CNBC.

“I don’t think he’s going to back down. President Trump, to be very blunt, is a macho male, and this macho male is not going to back down tomorrow simply because the Nasdaq’s down 5%,” said Gross, who’s also known as “Bond King.”

Gross said it’s not a time for investors to bottom fish, likening it to “catching a falling knife.”

Steven Blitz

“Tariffs attack US trading partners but, in effect, attack US corporate profit margins first,” wrote Steven Blitz, the chief US economist at GlobalData.TS Lombard. “The 40-odd years of profits rising relative to GDP has ended. The macro risk hitting markets is real, but only accentuates the devaluation process.”

“Further exacerbating market volatility is redirection of foreign capital from the US to wherever multiple expansion appears more promising,” Blitz wrote.

Jim O’Neill

Jim O’Neill, former chief economist at Goldman Sachs, told BBC News on Friday that the “sensible” thing to do would be for the UK to speak to other members of G7, aside from the US, about lowering trade barriers between each other, particularly for cross-border services.

He said this would be “very healthy for all those countries because it’s the one area of global trade that most countries haven’t done enough in.”

If the US wants to continue down this “kamikaze path,” the UK will have to respond, O’Neill added. “It is the US which is going to be hurt more, especially in the short-term, from these rather insane moves.”

Stephanie Kelton

“Just had a journalist ask me to explain “Liberation Day,”” Stephanie Kelton, author of The Deficit Myth, wrote in a post on X. “I told him it’s about liberating Americans from some of the cash in their wallets.”

George Saravelos

George Saravelos, a Deutsche Bank analyst, said in a Friday note that markets were pricing in a global recession.

“This is a US-centric fiscal shock driven by the Trump administration and it is fiscal policy that can unwind it. The countries that respond the quickest and most forcefully to this shock are those whose currencies will likely be the most resilient. And, on the flipside, the more the US fiscal strategy under the Trump administration lacks visibility, the more the market will punish the dollar and US assets.

“One last point: don’t expect a reluctant-to-cut Fed to support the dollar. Remember that during the European supply-shock of 2022, the ECB turned hawkish. The euro sold-off regardless because real rates and growth expectations collapsed.”

Kristalina Georgieva

Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, warned that US tariffs posed a “significant risk” to the global economy.

“We are still assessing the macroeconomic implications of the announced tariff measures, but they clearly represent a significant risk to the global outlook at a time of sluggish growth,” she said in a statement on Thursday.

Christine Lagarde

Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank, told Ireland’s Newstalk that the tariffs would be “negative the world over.”

She said Trump’s move “will not be good for the global economy and it will not be good for those who inflict the tariffs and those who retaliate.”

Lloyd Blankfein

Lloyd Blankfein, the former Goldman Sachs CEO, posted on X on Friday:

“The switchboard at the WH must be burning up with gov’ts trying to surrender in this trade war. Why not give them a chance? Make the 10pct min tariff immediate but defer the “reciprocal” part 6 mos. Take the win! The Prez said he’d make us tired of winning…I’m there now!”

Jerome Powell

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Friday said that the scope of Trump’s tariffs actions surpassed all expectations.

“While uncertainty remains elevated, it is now becoming clear that the tariff increases will be significantly larger than expected,” Powell said at a conference for business journalists. “The same is likely to be true of the economic effects, which will include higher inflation and slower growth.”

The central bank president repeatedly said it was too early to tell what the Fed’s response might be.

“We’ve taken a step back and we’re watching to see what the policies turn out to be and the ways in which they will affect the economy, and then we’ll be able to act, he said.”

American Enterprise Institute

Kevin Corinth, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning, DC-based think tank, wrote in an article published Friday that the formula behind Trump’s tariffs, which puts heavy emphasis on trade deficits, makes “no economic sense.”

“The trade deficit with a given country is not determined only by tariffs and non-tariff trade barriers, but also by international capital flows, supply chains, comparative advantage, geography, etc,” Corinth wrote. “But even if one were to take the Trump Administration’s tariff formula seriously, it makes an error that inflates the tariffs assumed to be levied by foreign countries four-fold.”

Mark Zandi

In a post on X on Thursday, Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, warned that a recession could “hit imminently and extend until next year” should Trump continue with his tariffs and other countries retaliate.

“Real GDP will fall close to 2% peak to trough, and unemployment will increase from its current 4% to 7.5% at its peak next year. I attach a 15% probability to this dark scenario,” he predicted.

Ed Yardeni

Speaking to Bloomberg TV, veteran analyst Ed Yardeni said he hoped the “message that the stock market is sending to the administration is being heard.”

“The market is giving a big thumbs down to this tariff policy,” he added.

Brad Setser

Brad Setser, former senior advisor to the US trade representative and fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the latest round of tariffs will be “painful.”

“I think what the announcement on Wednesday showed is that the decision of the administration, not surprisingly, was to follow President Trump’s instincts, not the instincts of his more moderate advisors, to go all in,” Setser said on Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast.

Setser said the goal is to “radically restructure the US and global economies using tariffs as a tool, with some flexibility perhaps to negotiate at the edges. But fundamentally, this is a test of what you can and cannot do with tariffs, and there was very little restraint, I would say, apart for, strangely enough, Canada and Mexico, USMCA, on the level of the tariffs.”

Greg Daco

Greg Daco, the chief economist at Ernst & Young, told Yahoo Finance that “the risk of a recession are very real” with the tariffs in place.

“The risks of a particularly severe recession are real, because if these tariffs remain in place on a persistent basis, you would see a drag on US economic activity worth about 1% to 1.5% of growth,” he said. “In an economy that is expected to grow around 1.5%, that puts the economy essentially into stagnation. Add to that a 1% to 1.5% lift on inflation, and you have stagflation.”

Douglas Irwin

Douglas Irwin, the trade historian and economics professor at Dartmouth College, wrote in The Economist that Trump’s tariffs “blow an enormous hole” in the trade policy that the US has advanced since World War II.

“The president now touts his tariffs as mainly ‘reciprocal’: ‘Whatever they charge us, we charge them.’ This makes them sound fair. Far from it,” Irwin said.

“Perhaps the most shocking aspect of this week’s events is the ability of one person to completely remake American trade policy. A situation in which the occupant of the White House can make such momentous changes on his own, unchecked, reflects serious political decay in American politics.”

Thomas Sowell

One day before Trump’s latest tariff announcement, the economist Thomas Sowell told the Hoover Institution that the president’s tariffs could lead to a global trade war.

“It’s painful to see a ruinous decision from back in the 1920s being repeated,” Sowell said. “If you set off a worldwide trade war, that has a devastating history.”

“Everybody loses because everybody follows suit,” he continued. “And all that happens is that you get a great reduction in international trade.”