Trump is set to throw another tariff tantrum at the state of the union. Economists know better

Who is President Trump? He is the self-proclaimed “Tariff Man.” For virtually all economists, regardless of their political stripes, this attribution marks a man as an enemy and puts a target on his back.

At his State of the Union address in February 2026, it would be no surprise if Trump continued his dayslong diatribe about his signature trade policy being so unceremoniously ruled unconstitutional by a 6-3 Supreme Court majority. On Friday, he raged at the fresh news of his defeat by calling the high court’s justices “disloyal” and immediately erected 10% tariffs on the world, revising those upward to 15% over the weekend, via social media. As this week has progressed, he has vowed “to do absolutely ‘terrible’ things to foreign countries.”

Trump claimed “the court has also approved all other Tariffs, of which there are many, and they can all be used in a much more powerful and obnoxious way, with legal certainty, than the Tariffs as initially used,” even though Section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act, under which he imposed new tariffs, has in fact never been used in this fashion.

The thing is, many businessmen........

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