Analysis by Aaron Blake
After a brief delay, President Donald Trump’s long-promised tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico are due to go into effect Tuesday — this despite fears that the taxes on imports could cripple the economies of our two neighboring allies and negatively impact the U.S. economy as well by exacerbating inflation.
That’s if Trump actually follows through on the 25 percent tariffs, of course. The signals from the White House right now are somewhat mixed.
But what’s clear is that the gambit is on increasingly shaky economic and political ground, even as Trump prepares to launch into it.
Trump has said in recent days that the tariffs will definitely move forward. “I’m not stopping the tariffs, no,” he said Wednesday when asked whether a drastic reduction in border crossings had made him rethink them. He added Monday that the 25 percent tariffs would indeed start Tuesday.
But it’s also evident that the details of the president’s proposal could change. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on both Sunday and Monday called the situation “fluid” and credited Canada’s and Mexico’s progress on reducing border crossings. He added Monday on CNN that Trump would “decide this afternoon, and tomorrow we’re going to put out those tariffs.”
Following Politics
Following
So who knows what awaits. Trump has used tariffs as bargaining chips before, and he previously granted Canada and Mexico a month-long reprieve despite relatively modest concessions.
But what’s happened over that month also looms large here. And that’s that politics and economics appear to be pushing more and more against such a move.
Should Trump move forward, the risks he would be taking appear to have grown significantly.
The big problem is the increasingly checkered U.S. economic picture. Despite Trump coming into office with high economic hopes, persistent inflation has cast a pall. And whatever stomach Americans had for tariffs, it appears to be shrinking.
The big news Monday was that the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta adjusted its gross domestic product (GDP) forecast down to negative-2.8 percent for the first quarter. Just days ago, the same forecast predicted 2.3 percent of growth.
The stock market also continued to struggle Monday after Trump suggested that the tariffs remained on, dropping hundreds of points.
The much-watched consumer sentiment survey from the University of Michigan has also trended decidedly in the wrong direction. It dropped 10 percent in February to its lowest point since 2023.
A big reason for that sudden drop in consumer sentiment is apparently the tariffs. About 40 percent of consumers spontaneously mentioned them, which was up from 27 percent in January. That suggests that economists’ long-standing warnings about the tariffs causing inflation — something Trump has downplayed by falsely claiming the tariffs would be paid for by other countries — are starting to register.
And that would track with plenty of other evidence. Americans have clearly soured on tariffs.
While Americans seemed open to and even supportive of the broad concept of tariffs when Trump pitched them during the 2024 campaign, the momentum appears to have swung in the other direction.
A Washington Post-Ipsos poll in mid-February showed Americans were about evenly split on Trump’s more-limited tariffs on Chinese goods. But they opposed the tariffs on Mexico 59 percent to 34 percent, and they opposed the tariffs on Canada 64-31. Independents opposed both by about 40 points.
The same poll showed 69 percent of Americans felt the tariffs would increase the prices they pay. That included 53 percent of Republicans.
All of those numbers are higher than we’d previously seen, which might suggest Americans who once largely misunderstood what tariffs are have begun to tune in to what they could mean for them.
Which brings us to the political danger for Trump. The risk with the tariffs isn’t just that they appear broadly unpopular and could negatively impact the economy at a fraught time, but that they could give Americans a convenient culprit if economic pains do persist.
A CBS News-YouGov poll this weekend is a case in point.
It tested eight different things they wanted Trump to prioritize, and none of them ranked lower than tariffs. Only 30 percent wanted Trump to make tariffs a high priority.
But the survey also asked what people thought Trump was prioritizing. And tariffs ranked right near the top, alongside the U.S.-Mexico border and reforming the federal workforce. Fully 68 percent thought Trump was prioritizing tariffs a lot.
Perhaps most troubling for Trump, significantly more Americans felt he was prioritizing tariffs a lot than said the same of the economy (36 percent) and inflation (29 percent).
And the evidence is growing that Americans think Trump is indeed neglecting inflation. An earlier CBS News-YouGov poll showed 66 percent of Americans said Trump was not focusing enough on inflation. A Reuters-Ipsos poll showed Americans disapproved of Trump on inflation 52-32.
You begin to see how this could go sideways for Trump. He could choose as his first big economic move something that Americans decidedly don’t want. And it could raise prices at a time when inflation fears remain high and a large number of Americans perceive him as giving that issue short shrift.
Tuesday could be a big day for the future of Trump’s presidency.