Matthew Lynn’s July 31 online op-ed, “Trump’s tariffs aren’t crushing global trade,” argued that the Trump administration’s tariffs “did not work the way the Econ 101 crowd expected them to.”
It’s true that despite the tariffs, “the U.S. economy did not crash, inflation did not spiral out of control, and shelves at Walmart are not empty.” But this reality doesn’t contradict Econ 101. The case against tariffs isn’t that they invariably unleash economic Armageddon. Instead, the core economic case against tariffs is that they reduce the rate of economic growth, the effect of which compounds over time for as long as the tariffs remain in place. Tariffs make most people poorer than they would otherwise be. The recent tepid growth of real U.S. gross domestic product is consistent with what we in the Econ 101 crowd predicted.
Lynn also wrote that “in total, U.S. imports increased from $275 billion in May 2024 to $312 billion in May 2026.” But why start with May 2024, nearly a year before Liberation Day? According to the Federal Reserve Economic Data to which Lynn linked, imports hit their peak in March 2025. This was the month before Liberation Day. Since then, imports are down by about 9 percent. This fact is evidence — not defiance — of economic logic.
Donald J. Boudreaux, Fairfax
The writer is an economics professor at George Mason University.
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