Stop Lying To Me About Trump’s Tariffs

Can people please stop talking complete, unmitigated claptrap on the subject of President Donald Trump, Mexican tariffs, and the U.S. economy? Is it really too much to ask?

The panic over the last few days about possible Mexican tariffs is even more ridiculous than the panic we had last month about the China tariffs — and that was bad enough.

Trump’s new tariff threat will send prices soaring for U.S. households, say the doomsayers. They’ll cost hundreds of thousands of jobs. They’ll crash the stock market. They’ll crash the economy.

Really? No doubt this is why the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +0.60% plunged 350 points in a panic on Friday. And the Dow’s performance since then through Wednesday? Up around 600 points.

Ex-officer accused in New Orleans mass shooting plot released without charges

Lifelong Lib Chris Matthews Goes Scorched Earth on Far-Left Dems, DSA Members: ‘I’m Not with This Crowd’

Convicted rapist who preyed on women at America’s top party school faces reckoning after courthouse dash

LA Lakers Sold to Ex-Disney CEO and Jared Kushner’s Brother for Record-Breaking Price

Texas judge accused of ‘doxxing’ political critic faces federal lawsuit, growing push to oust him from office

Unearthed interview exposes Dem senator’s past support for reparations: ‘There is a debt unpaid’

DOJ Busts Massive International Sham Marriage Scheme, 1,000 Weddings to ‘Fraudulently Obtain Immigration Status’

FBI ran secret operation to extinguish Biden family foreign influence scandal: Declassified documents

Fox News Poll: New matchup, same result: Maine Senate race stays locked

Here’s who could replace White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt

New York Social Services Worker Charged With Issuing Multiple Benefit Cards to Herself

Hasan Piker cheers Mamdani aide going ‘beast mode’ with ‘impoverish the White middle-class’ remark

Repeat offender sucker-punches woman in city where Ukrainian refugee was stabbed by career criminal

Deadly military helicopter crash in Texas kills 2, sparks wildfire and forces evacuations: officials

DOJ makes first arrest in Southern Poverty Law Center fraud case

The Standard & Poor’s 500 SPX, +0.54% is now higher than it was last Thursday, just before Trump shook his little fist at the Mexicans. And it’s not just the popular stocks such as Apple AAPL, +1.09% Netflix NFLX, +0.13% , and TSLA, +4.54% U.S. industrial stocks — as measured by the S&P 1500 Industrials index — are up 3%. The stocks of automobile components companies are up almost 5%. Small company stocks, often a useful barometer for the domestic, Main Street economy, are up about 1.5%, whether measured by the broad Russell 2000 RUT, -0.49% or the narrower, higher-quality S&P 600 index SML, -0.63% .

Sure, a few days’ stock market action doesn’t mean much long term. And the stock market isn’t America. But then again, apparently it was an Infallible Omen of Doom when the stock market fell on Friday. You see how that works?

Whether or not these tariffs are a sensible policy is another matter. But anyone claiming they will cost households a small fortune and wipe out vast numbers of jobs is relying on some heroic assumptions. Or, as non-economists call them: guesses.

U.S. imports from Mexico came to $372 billion last year, according to the federal government. So slapping a 5% tariff on them amounts to a federal tax hike of… er… $19 billion. Total federal taxes last year: $3.3 trillion. So we’re talking about a 0.6% tax hike.

But the Mexican peso USDMXN, +0.4490% has already reacted. It has weakened by 2.7% against the U.S. dollar DXY, -0.30% in a few days — wiping out more than half of that cost increase.