{"id":1405027,"date":"2026-02-06T11:43:27","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T16:43:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thenewsherald.com\/?p=1405027&preview=true&preview_id=1405027"},"modified":"2026-02-06T12:03:27","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T17:03:27","slug":"trump-tariff-accomplishments-fact-check","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thenewsherald.com\/2026\/02\/06\/trump-tariff-accomplishments-fact-check\/","title":{"rendered":"FACT FOCUS: Trump says tariffs have created an economic miracle. The facts tell a different story"},"content":{"rendered":"

By PAUL WISEMAN and CHRISTOPHER RUGABER, AP Economics Writers<\/strong><\/p>\n

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 Looking back on the first year of his second term, President Donald Trump boasts that he has resurrected the American economy<\/a> by imposing big import taxes<\/a> on foreign products.<\/p>\n

He made his case in a recent opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal, chiding the paper and critics, including mainstream economists, who predicted that tariffs would backfire, raising prices and threatening growth. \u201cInstead,\u201d the Republican president wrote, \u201cthey have created an American economic miracle.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the proof he offers is often off-base or wrong altogether.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a look at the facts around Trump\u2019s assessment of tariffs:<\/p>\n

CLAIM:<\/strong> \u201cJust over one year ago, we were a \u2018DEAD\u2019 country. Now, we are the \u2018HOTTEST\u201d country anywhere in the world!\u2019 \u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

THE FACTS:<\/strong> This is a standard statement from Trump. But the U.S. economy was hardly \u201cdead\u2019\u2019 when Trump returned to office last year. And in Trump\u2019s second term, it\u2019s performed strongly \u2014 after getting off to a bumpy start.<\/p>\n

In 2024, the last year of the Biden presidency, American gross domestic product grew 2.8%, adjusted for inflation, faster than any wealthy country in the world except Spain. It also expanded at a healthy rate from 2021 through 2023.<\/p>\n

The numbers for all of 2025 aren\u2019t out yet. But during the first three quarters of the year, Trump\u2019s tariffs \u2014 or the threat of them \u2014 delivered mixed results for the American economy.<\/p>\n

From January to March, U.S. GDP actually shrank for the first time in three years. The main culprit was easy to identify: a surge in imports, which are subtracted from GDP, as American companies rushed to buy foreign products before Trump could impose tariffs on them.<\/p>\n

But growth rebounded in the second half of the year. From April through June, the economy expanded at a healthy 3.8% pace. And from July through September, it grew even faster \u2014 4.4%. A big part of the surge was a drop in imports, likely reflecting Trump\u2019s tariffs as well as the fact that importers had already stocked up at the start of the year. Strong consumer spending also drove economic growth.<\/p>\n

Trump also likes point to solid gains in the U.S. stock market. He noted that stocks hit new highs 52 times in 2025. It\u2019s true that the American stock market did well last year. But it underperformed many foreign stock markets. The benchmark S&P 500 index climbed 17% \u2014 a nice gain but short of a 71% surge in South Korea, 29% in Hong Kong, 26% in Japan, 22% in Germany and 21% in the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n

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CLAIM:<\/strong> \u201cAnnual core inflation for the past three months has dropped to just 1.4% \u2014 far lower than almost anyone, other than me, had predicted.\u201d<\/p>\n

THE FACTS:<\/strong> The president is using cherry-picked data to vastly exaggerate where inflation stands.<\/p>\n

His figure for annual inflation in the past three months \u2014 which excludes the volatile food and energy prices \u2014 is low, but reflects data distorted by the government shutdown in October and November, which disrupted the government\u2019s data collection and forced the agency that compiles the figures to plug in rough estimates in some categories that artificially lowered overall inflation.<\/p>\n

Annual core inflation for the final six months of 2025 is higher at 2.6%. That is down from January 2025\u2019s level but about where it was in October 2024. Overall, inflation has leveled off this year, and was 3% in September before the government shutdown, the same as it had been in January 2025.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true that inflation hasn\u2019t been as high as many economists worried it would be when Trump started rolling out tariffs last spring, but that is partly because many of the \u201cLiberation Day\u201d tariffs were withdrawn, reduced or riddled with exemptions. When Democrats won some high-profile elections last year by highlighting \u201caffordability\u201d concerns, the administration rolled back existing or planned tariffs on coffee, beef and kitchen cabinets, for example, a backhanded acknowledgment that the duties were raising prices.<\/p>\n

The impact of tariffs can be more clearly seen in core goods prices, which also exclude food and energy. Before the pandemic, core goods costs typically barely rose \u2014 or even fell \u2014 each year, but last December they were 1.4% higher than a year earlier. That was the largest increase, outside the pandemic, since 2011.<\/p>\n

Alberto Cavallo, an economist at Harvard and the author of a study on the impact of tariffs cited by Trump in his op-ed, has found<\/a> that Trump\u2019s tariffs have boosted overall inflation by roughly three-quarters of a percentage point.<\/p>\n

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CLAIM:<\/strong> \u201cThe data shows that the burden, or \u2018incidence,\u2019 of the tariffs has fallen overwhelmingly on foreign producers and middlemen, including large corporations that are not from the U.S. According to a recent study<\/a> by the Harvard Business School, these groups are paying at least 80% of tariff costs.\u201d<\/p>\n

THE FACTS:<\/strong> The study Trump cited appears to conclude the opposite of what Trump claimed. Authored by Cavallo and two colleagues, it finds that \u201cU.S. consumers were bearing roughly 43% of the tariff-induced border cost after seven months, with the remainder absorbed mostly by U.S. firms.\u201d Cavallo said by email that import prices hadn\u2019t fallen much, \u201cwhich suggests foreign exporters did not reduce their pre-tariff prices enough to shoulder a large share of the burden.\u2033<\/p>\n

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CLAIM:<\/strong> \u201cWe have slashed our monthly trade deficit by an astonishing 77%.\u201d<\/p>\n

THE FACTS:<\/strong> This claim involves more cherry-picking, reflecting the percentage drop from a very high trade deficit in January 2025, when the president took office, to a super-low deficit in October.<\/p>\n

The story is more complicated than the president makes it. The trade deficit \u2014 the gap between what the U.S. sells other countries and what it buys from them \u2014 has actually risen since he returned to the White House.<\/p>\n

From January through November in 2025, the U.S. accumulated a trade deficit of nearly $840 billion, up 4% from the same period of 2024. In the first three months of 2025, importers rushed to buy foreign products \u2014 before Trump could slap tariffs on them. After that, monthly trade deficits came in consistently lower than they were in 2024. But the January-March import surge was so big that the 2025 year-to-date trade deficit still exceeds 2024\u2019s.<\/p>\n

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CLAIM:<\/strong> \u201cI have successfully wielded the tariff tool to secure colossal Investments in America, like no other country has ever seen before. \u2026 In less than one year, we have secured commitments for more than $18 trillion, a number that is unfathomable to many.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

THE FACTS:<\/strong> Trump did, in fact, use the tariff threat to pry investment commitments from America\u2019s major trading partners. The European Union, for instance, pledged $600 billion over four years.<\/p>\n

But Trump hasn\u2019t said how he came up with $18 trillion. The White House has published a figure of $9.6 trillion<\/a>, which includes private and public investment commitments from other countries.<\/p>\n