U.S. economist says White House got his tariff research ‘all wrong’

Economist Brent Neiman criticizes Trump administration's misinterpretation of research on tariffs, suggesting levies should be smaller.

An economist whose work was cited by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration to justify sweeping tariffs has said officials misinterpreted the research — and the levies should have been as little as a quarter of what the White House announced.

Brent Neiman, who was a U.S. Treasury official under previous President Joe Biden, co-authored a 2021 paper on the impact of tariffs on prices in the United States.

The paper was cited by the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) in a statement released last week explaining the calculations behind the major import tariffs announced by Mr. Trump that threaten to pull the global economy into a recession.

“I disagree fundamentally with the government’s trade policy and approach,” Mr. Neiman wrote in an opinion essay published by The New York Times on Monday (April 7, 2025).

Mr. Neiman said the USTR’s ”biggest mistake” was misconstruing trade deficits with other countries as a definite sign of unfair practices by the other party.

Additionally, the Trump administration miscited the paper to suggest that domestic prices would only rise slightly under the new tariff regime, Neiman said in the essay, which ran with a headline saying the White House’s use of the research “got it all wrong.”

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