Free Republic

White House trade adviser Peter Navarro estimated the U.S. would raise about $600 billion to $700 billion a year from tariffs...Economists say the true number will probably be less than half of that sum.

There was an oft-repeated message in Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell’s press conference on Wednesday: Tariffs will raise consumer prices. The U.S. central bank raised its inflation forecast for 2025, as have many economists, due to the expected impact of a trade war initiated by the Trump administration. “A good part of it is coming from tariffs,” Powell said of the Fed’s elevated inflation estimate. “I do think with the arrival of the tariff inflation, further progress may be delayed,” Powell said. His statement comes at a time when pandemic-era inflation has gradually declined but hasn’t yet been fully tamed...