Trump’s tariffs are his biggest policy failure

After a stinging but widely expected loss at the U.S. Supreme Court, President Trump pressed his enablers to search, once again, for some law he could use to justify imposing new tariff rates on dozens of countries, both friends and foes alike. Yet no Trump policy has been a bigger economic and political failure than his tariffs, alienating other countries, harming U.S. businesses and, most importantly, enraging American voters.

Just consider all the ways Trump’s tariff obsession has failed.

First, tariffs aren’t being paid by other countries, as the president has asserted repeatedly. Trump signed an executive order on Inauguration Day ordering certain agencies to explore the feasibility of creating an External Revenue Service to collect tariff-related money from other countries. As the president stated in his inaugural address, “Instead of taxing our citizens to enrich other countries, we will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens.”

Of course, American companies and individuals pay his tariffs, not other countries. Indeed, the Reason Foundation claims his tariffs have amounted to the largest tax increase on Americans since 1993.

For example, Ford Motor Company announced in February that it paid about $2 billion in Trump’s tariffs for 2025 and expected to pay another $2 billion in 2026.

General Motors also had to pay about $2 billion in 2025. And yet Trump said during his recent trip to Michigan, “It’s amazing what tariffs are doing for GM.” He should have said “doing to GM.”

Another example: More than a thousand companies — including FedEx, Costco........

© The Hill