90K Jobs Lost, $264B in Revenue: Inside Trump's Tariff Year | WSJ

TL;DR

Trump's Liberation Day tariffs reshaped US trade policy, tripling tariff revenue but costing 90,000 manufacturing jobs and shifting costs onto American consumers.

Key Points

• 1.Liberation Day triggered the highest average US tariff rate since the Great Depression. On April 2nd, 2025, Trump raised the average tariff rate from 9.1% to 24.2%, applying levies to virtually every trading partner — including uninhabited territories like the Heard and McDonald Islands — before pausing them 90 days later in what Wall Street dubbed a 'TACO' (Trump Always Chickens Out).
• 2.The US-China trade war reached triple-digit tariffs before a truce was struck. Tariffs between the two largest economies exceeded 100%, nearly halting trade entirely, until a May agreement cut reciprocal tariffs by 115 percentage points each, dropping the average US tariff rate from 24.2% to 15.2%.
• 3.Trump more than tripled tariff revenue to $264 billion in 2025, but 90,000 manufacturing jobs were lost. Despite collecting $264B compared to $79B the prior year, the New York Fed found nearly 90% of tariff costs were borne by US consumers and businesses, and revenue was dwarfed by Trump's 2025 tax cuts and increased military spending.
• 4.Trump used tariffs as economic coercion to push roughly 20 nations into new trade agreements. Major economies including the EU, India, Japan, and South Korea struck deals under tariff pressure, marking a fundamental shift from decades of US cooperative trade policy to one of overt economic coercion against allies and adversaries alike.