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.

POTUS Wants Answers: Kennedy Center Chaos as Ric Grenell Accused of Selling White House Access, $5.6 Million ‘Donation’ Allegedly Missing

Bombshell Claim: Comer Says Ilhan Omar’s Winery Sold Empty Barrels to Investors

Midwest pro-Trump state could hold key to Republicans’ midterm hopes

Trump puts fraudsters on notice with $25M whistleblower program offering cash for tips that deliver

Marine Le Pen vows to be the one to end ‘decades of anarchic immigration’ as France is torn apart by riots

Rogers argues El-Sayed is vulnerable with 2 traditionally Democratic blocs as Obama heads to Michigan

UNC settles Trump admin probes into alleged campus antisemitism, race-based admissions

Rogers warns Michigan voters against El-Sayed’s ‘extreme’ agenda ahead of election

Watch: Trump Calls Slotkin ‘Lowlife’ for Plan to Terrorize, Deter Future Conservatives With the Threat of Legal Punishment

Watch: Dem Sen So Radically Ignorant on Iran That CNN Has to Educate Him – So Bad, CNN Even Takes Trump’s Side

Rediscovered DHS Docs Suggest Ilhan Omar May Have Never Been US Citizen in First Place

JD Vance declines to endorse Netanyahu despite Trump’s strong backing

Judge walks back ‘untenable’ order against Trump DOJ after tense DC golf course hearing

Breaking: Feds Have DNA Evidence That Ilhan Omar Committed Voter Fraud, Married Her Brother – Source

‘Changes the balance of leverage’: Zelensky tries to hold on as Trump pressures him to concede

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.