Whom Have Trump’s Tariffs Helped?

By John R. Puri

Thursday, April 02, 2026

 

The Cato Institute has a great analysis today, on the anniversary of President Trump’s “liberation day” speech, of the effects of Trump’s tariff regimes after one year. We can see the costs of the tariffs clearly:

 

·         Higher Prices: The 2025 tariffs were passed through to American buyers at a rate as high as 96 percent, reversing the downward price trajectory of both imported and domestic goods. Today, prices of retail goods are around 6 percent higher than they would have been under the pre-tariff trend.

 

·         Greater Uncertainty and Complexity: The Trade Policy Uncertainty Index hit the highest level ever recorded in 2025, as tariff rates and categories were constantly changed. Overlapping tariff regimes also piled red tape onto U.S. importers.

 

·         International Isolation: As America cuts them off, other countries are actively deepening trade ties with one another. The United States has effectively ceded the field of good-faith trade diplomacy, leaving its economy less interconnected and letting competitors like China and the European Union fill the gap.

 

On the flip side, there is little apparent evidence of how the tariffs have helped the U.S. economy:

 

·         Declining Manufacturing Employment: America has many fewer manufacturing workers today than on liberation day. Employment in the sector has been falling since 2023, so job losses aren’t novel, but tariffs certainly have not led to a manufacturing resurgence as proponents promised. Investment in new factories also continued to decline last year, so tariffs have not even demonstrated that they will create many manufacturing jobs in the future.

 

·         Steady Trade Deficit: The trade deficit has no effect on Americans’ incomes or welfare, but reducing it was a stated aim of President Trump. Yet the measure barely budged in 2025, and the deficit in goods actually increased from 2024.

 

·         Stagnant Foreign Investment and Economic Growth: Despite all of Trump’s fantastical claims of money pouring into America thanks to trade deals, quarterly foreign direct investment has fallen since April 2025. Worse still, 70 percent of last year’s foreign direct investment came in the form of retained corporate earnings — not new investments — compared with just 20 percent in 2016. Economic growth has also declined slightly, so tariffs have not, in fact, created the “strongest economy in history.”

 

When we broaden our view of employment to include all blue-collar jobs, not just manufacturing, the picture is even worse. Blue-collar employment numbers turned negative in 2025 after years of gains, driven by sudden losses in transportation and warehousing and stagnation in construction jobs:

 

 

It’s possible that job losses would have occurred without the tariffs. But logistics and construction are both heavily exposed to the added costs tariffs impose. Duties have raised the prices of merchandise, potentially reducing consumer and business demand that requires transportation to meet. They have also increased the cost of building materials.

 

To be fair, there are at least two groups of people that tariffs have helped: lobbyists and lawyers. The Cato Institute notes that 2,000 importers have filed suit to “obtain refunds for more than $160 billion in tariffs paid to the federal government” that the Supreme Court struck down as illegal, plus interest. Meanwhile, the number of clients represented by firms lobbying for tariff-related issues jumped to 382 last year from just 12o the previous year. The Rust Belt may still be struggling, but K Street is doing peachy.

 

Is that whom protectionists were trying to help by taxing economic efficiency? If not: What were Trump’s tariffs supposed to do, and why haven’t they done it yet?