Tariffs: Jobs, Prices, and Retaliation

EconoFact Chats

Tariffs are taxes. But unlike most taxes, politicians on both sides of the aisle are calling for maintaining or raising tariffs. The goal is to save jobs and raise revenue. But do tariffs help achieve these objectives? Kim Clausing joins EconoFact Chats to discuss her research on how tariffs negatively impact consumers, shift tax burdens away from the well-off toward lower-income consumers, adversely affect U.S. workers and industries, and invite retaliatory tariffs from trading partners. Kim is the Eric M. Zolt Professor of Tax Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law. She served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Analysis in the U.S. Department of the Treasury during the first years of the Biden Administration.