I am writing this a few weeks before the 2024 election. Both Presidential campaigns have taken populist stances that display a lot of ignorance about how macroeconomies work. Good luck with that.
For his part, Trump is doubling down on the tariffs he deployed while President, and proposing new tariffs that are more comprehensive, and often bigger.
The article entitled "What populists don't understand about tariffs (but economists do)" goes over some of the magical thinking underlying support for these plans.
Most of this piece is a response to a piece by Oren Cass in The Atlantic, who pushes the net benefits of the proposed tariffs. Cass has been involved in conservative political policy circles for the last 15 years. And, as noted in my post about Harris' economic team ... he's another person that presents themselves as a macroeconomics expert ... without having much economics background. Cass was a political economy major (whatever that non-standard degree entails) at Williams College (a small, northeastern, liberal arts school). Then he went to Harvard Law School. He also worked for Bain; so he's smart and ambitious, but again business consulting is not macroeconomics. He also worked for Romney's campaigns, and for conservative think tanks.
The authors hit Cass' position early and hard:
... An assessment of tariffs as a policy tool must answer three questions:
- How costly are tariffs?
- Would they deliver the desired benefits?
- Would other policy tools be more effective than tariffs?
Our brief answers are:
- Very.
- Negligibly or no.
- Yes.
If Trump wins the election, you should definitely read the whole thing.
If Harris wins and proposes tariff policies (because it's not like her campaign has not already copycatted Trump campaign proposals), you should definitely read the whole thing.
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