Donald Trump’s decision to suspend most of his proposed “reciprocal” tariffs—save for those aimed at China—was not a clever recalibration. It was a reluctant concession to economic reality. What he initially billed as a bold protectionist strategy has unraveled into a belated acknowledgment that trade wars, far from being easy to win, are devastatingly expensive to fight—especially when you’re waging them against friends and foes alike. The damage of his original plan would have been catastrophic, and even the diluted version he now proposes will leave scars.

Consider the data. Economic modeling suggested that if the full tariff plan had gone into effect—blanketing nearly all imports with steep duties and triggering sweeping retaliation from trading partners—U.S. real consumption would have fallen by 2.4% in 2025, GDP would have contracted by 2.6%, and employment would have dropped by 2.7%. For an economy operating at near-full employment, that would mean millions of jobs suddenly vanish. What begins with a modest 4.2% unemployment rate could quickly spiral into something far more painful.

Nor would the pain have been temporary. Over a 15-year horizon, the economic effects compound: investment dries up, productivity slows, and real incomes stagnate. Tariffs don’t revive American manufacturing—they hollow out the economy from the inside. The fantasy that high tariffs could somehow resurrect an imagined industrial golden age is just that: a fantasy. What they actually do is erode the very economic power that made America influential in the first place.

The scaled-down version of Trump’s plan—essentially a 10% blanket tariff on most imports while China remains saddled with a whopping 125%—is marginally less apocalyptic but still injurious. The revised numbers still project a 1.9% drop in consumption next year, a 4.8% decline in investment, and a 2.1% fall in employment. None of........

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