Early last year, President Donald Trump rolled out the highest tariff rates in more than a century, promising that they would boost government revenue and negotiating leverage with no effects on inflation nor other collateral damage. After a dizzying series of changes, many of them implemented haphazardly through social media decree, the duties are — depending on the measure you use — somewhere on the order of the highest in eight decades. And we now have the data in hand to thoroughly disprove the notion that the policy gambit would prove pain free.

It may not have caused a recession or a widespread inflation spike — as a few Cassandras predicted — but it has still hit small businesses and consumers living paycheck to paycheck particularly hard. And it’s having an enduring impact on borrowing costs and real incomes, not to mention America’s standing with allies and trading partners around the world.

© Bloomberg