Trump’s tariffs are a $1.4 trillion gamble with the economy and prices

President Donald Trump is on the verge of hitting America’s three biggest trading partners with sweeping tariffs, a far more aggressive use of his favorite economic weapon than anything he did during his first term.

President Donald Trump is on the verge of hitting America’s three biggest trading partners with sweeping tariffs, a far more aggressive use of his favorite economic weapon than anything he did during his first term. The looming import taxes on Mexico, Canada and China will be a major test of Trump’s unorthodox use of tariffs, which he’s described as “the greatest thing ever invented.” It’s an enormous gamble, arguably a bigger one than any economic policy Trump enacted during his four-plus years in the White House. And this strategy has the potential to upend the thing many voters care about the most: the economy and the cost of living. But Trump’s tariffs pose a big risk: They could backfire, lifting already-high consumer prices at the grocery store, rocking the shaky stock market or killing jobs in a full-blown trade war. “This may be the biggest own-goal yet,” Mary Lovely, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, told CNN in a phone interview. “This is a huge gamble. It’s a recipe for slowing down the economy and increasing inflation.” The Wall Street Journal went a step further, publishing a scathing op-ed on Saturday titled: “The Dumbest Trade War in History.”