‘Prices Would be Lower’: Econ Expert Says No Doubt Left Trump’s Tariffs Drove Inflation

MS NOW’s Stephanie Ruhle asked the Cato Institute’s vice president of general economics, Scott Lincicome, to weigh in Thursday on the new report from New York’s Federal Reserve, which unequivocally blamed President Donald Trump’s tariffs for inflation.

“I want to go back to tariffs just for a moment though, because you posted this report from the New York Fed,” Ruhle began, asking:

We just mentioned it: Trump’s tariffs contributed 2.9% to U.S. goods price inflation. What would things look like without Trump’s tariffs right now in terms of inflation?

“Yeah, well, you know, overall inflation, you’re still going to have to deal with those big monetary policy factors and the rest. But we can say, I think pretty confidently at this point, goods prices would be lower,” Lincicome replied, adding:

The reality is we now have a boatload of studies that say that these tariffs have increased goods prices, whether it is real-world studies of actual prices at retailers or these economic studies from the Fed and other places. And so, yeah, whether it’s grocery prices or clothing or anything else, when you go to Walmart or Target and the rest, you can say, I think pretty plainly now, that tariffs have made those more expensive.

CNBC reported on the new NY Fed report earlier in the day and summed it up: “The cost of 67 categories of goods were 2.9 percentage points higher as of February thanks to tariffs, according to a paper from a team of researchers at the central bank’s New York arm. Without the levies, the team found that prices for the products they studied would have pulled back by almost 1%.”

Watch the clip above via MS NOW.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!