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.

Newsom Commutes Sentences of California’s 548 Prisoners on Death Row

Meghan Markle’s father arrested on federal child pornography charges

Allies fear relying on US after Starshield disruption demonstrated ‘kill switch’ threat

Dems pivot from ‘affordability’ pitch to DHS probe threats after midterm wins

Russia secretly bolstered Iran’s missile arsenal before war with US, records uncover

Prosecutor overseeing Trump ‘grand conspiracy’ investigation resigns

‘I Wanted to Punch Them in the Face’: Charles Barkley Blasts Trick or Treaters, and the Full Story Makes It Almost Relatable

Lauren Boebert’s Campaign Investigating ‘Very Unusual Voting Patterns’ as She Trails in Tight Race

Progressive group’s 182-page blueprint maps out potential Dem investigations into Trump, corporate allies

‘Pro-Palestine’ Protesters Show True Colors By Targeting Jewish Businesses in Philadelphia Day Before Kristallnacht Anniversary

Former US senator and West Virginia governor Jay Rockefeller dies at 89

GOP redistricting scheme goes awry

In a new version of Stephen King’s classic, we get the ‘Carrie’ we deserve

Patrick Stewart, 1940-2026

2028 GOP battle lines emerge as Vance, Cruz, DeSantis clash over midterm losses and more top headlines

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.