The Incoherence of the Trump Tariff Announcements

Sometimes you see a figure that makes you uncertain whether to laugh or cry, so you do a little of both. The Global Linkages Lab at Brown University–specifically, Şebnem Kalemli-Özcan, Can Soylu, and Muhammed A. Yildirim–have sought to track down “every occasion on which the President attached a number to a US tariff, whatever the channel: speeches, interviews and press gaggles, Truth Social posts, executive orders and proclamations, and White House fact sheets and statements.” Some announcements were made more than once in different formats, so their list from January 21, 2025 up to the present includes 749 total such statements, covering 341 separate tariff changes. They call it TiRADE, for “Tariff Rates in Announcements, Declarations, and Events.” Blue dots show threatened or announced tariffs, green dots show implemented tariffs. Details behind the figure and sources for the statements are all available at the TiRADE website. Here, I just want to emphasize the uncertainty and…