U.S. President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement of sweeping new tariffs on imports from more than 180 countries will be remembered as a man-made economic tsunami.
Many are already comparing it to President Herbert Hoover’s 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which slashed global trade by 66% in five years and deepened the Great Depression. Trump’s tariffs — most of which have been abruptly paused for 90 days — have rattled financial markets, prompting analysts to warn that the United States could enter a recession in 2025.
The global implications can hardly be underestimated. As the world’s largest economy, the U.S. has an outsize impact on other countries’ exports and growth. Adding to the uncertainty is Trump’s erratic approach to policymaking, which is nurturing doubts about the U.S. dollar’s viability as a global reserve currency.
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