A Little Disturbance: Trump's Looming Tariffs Leave Business Braced for Chaos

Donald Trump won back the White House with a promise to transform the US economy. Millions of Americans, facing higher prices and bigger bills, elected a president who pledged to revive his country's industrial heartlands and leave the rest of the world to pick up the bill.

- Callum Jones

On Wednesday a day dubbed liberation day by the president and his aides Trump has vowed to pull the trigger and impose a historic barrage of tariffs on goods from overseas he claims will fund an extraordinary revival.

Ten weeks after obtaining power, Trump has said he will raise tariffs on all products from countries that charge tariffs on US exports; hit goods from Canada and Mexico with sweeping duties; introduce steep tariffs on foreign cars, chips and drugs; and target countries importing oil from Venezuela with duties on their US exports.

This is ""the big one,"" according to the president. Business leaders and economists are certainly worried about the scale of his trade strategy, which the Tax Foundation already estimates could knock US GDP by roughly 0.7% and cost about 500,000 US jobs.

"The escalating tariffs are a body blow to the global trading system," said Eswar Prasad, professor of trade policy at Cornell University, and a former official at the International Monetary Fund.

Wherever you stand, a move on this scale would constitute a radical shake-up and set the stage for a fundamental overhaul of the US economy. And yet, even as he ramped up the rhetoric, Trump has appeared to tread carefully.

"I will immediately begin the overhaul of our trade system to protect American workers and families," the president declared at his inauguration in January. "Instead of taxing our citizens to enrich other countries, we will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens."

While the threats were immediate, the action was not. Take Canada and Mexico. The administration has adopted a strikingly hardline stance against the US's largest and nearest trading partners, but its imposition of blanket tariffs has been hit by a dizzying array of shifting deadlines, delays and reversals.