The Trump administration’s barrage of “Liberation Day” tariffs on countries around the world this year has rattled consumers, businesses and investors. Although President Trump on Wednesday announced a 90-day pause on most of his new tariffs, he upped import duties on Chinese goods to 125% — escalating a conflict between the world’s two largest economies.
We asked you what questions you had about tariffs and answered some of those in a CBS News 24/7 special. Read on for some answers to your questions below.
Are global tariffs legal, and have U.S. levies on other countries risen or fallen over the years?
CBS MoneyWatch: Tariffs are legal under World Trade Organization rules, although participating countries must comply with certain restrictions and levies are generally capped.
As a result, nations have long had the right to impose multilateral tariffs, although those costs vary widely based on trade agreements, product type and many other factors.
In the 19th century, average U.S. tariff rates on trading partners routinely exceeded 30%. The government sharply reduced those levies after the Great Depression, cutting them to single digits. After resuming power in 2025, President Trump raised the effective U.S. tariff to 22% — the highest since 1909.
For the Trump administration, are these massive tariffs intended to pressure other nations into more favorable trade deals, or is the goal to push American businesses to invest more in domestic manufacturing? Or both?
Both, correct. These historically large tariffs have several main objectives. In the short term, the tariffs are intended to pressure countries to come to the table to negotiate what Mr. Trump sees as more favorable trade deals.
Over the long term, Trump administration officials say that sharply raising U.S. tariffs will spur both domestic and foreign companies eager to avoid the added costs to expand here at home, creating jobs, reinvigorating manufacturers and boosting economic growth.
President Trump has also long argued that global trade rules, enshrined in entities like the World Trade Organization, disdvantage the U.S. by, for example, permitting countries like China, Germany and Japan to subsidize key industries. He blames those rules for fueling large global trade imbalances that have saddled the U.S. with a large, and growing, trade deficit.
Another goal of tariffs is to generate federal revenue — funds that Mr. Trump will likely need to offset additional tax cuts he has promised to Americans and to corporations.
Why do some people oppose deploying tariffs against countries that impose tariffs on the U.S.?
Most mainstream economists think the kind of sweeping tariffs imposed by Mr. Trump on nearly all U.S. imports act as a tax on businesses and consumers. Such levies raise the cost of many essential items, leading to higher prices for American households; depress economic growth; and could even trigger a recession.
Under this view, a trade war in which countries jack up tariffs on their economic partners effectively makes them all poorer.
By contrast, trade experts also say that targeted tariffs — implemented as but one element in a larger industrial strategy — can help protect critical U.S. industries and workers from unfair foreign competition.
How do these tariffs impact consumers, especially when it comes to prices on everyday items like groceries or housewares?
Tariffs are taxes paid by importers such as Walmart, which must pay the fees to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection when it accepts shipments at American ports. As a result, U.S. businesses typically pass on most or all of that cost to consumers through higher prices.
For instance, after Mr. Trump added tariffs to imported washing machines during his first term, the median price of those appliances jumped more than 11%, tacking on about $86 to the cost of a new unit, according to University of Chicago researchers.
While consumers can opt for U.S.-made merchandise, domestic manufacturers also may raise their prices due to tariffs. Sometimes that’s due to an increase in the cost of imported goods they need to manufacture their products. But some companies also take the opportunity to hike prices because the newly expensive foreign-made products provide them with more pricing flexibility.
Without Mr. Trump’s pause, imported vegetables, fruit and nuts were set to rise by 19% due to the tariffs, according to a recent analysis from the Yale Budget Lab, a public policy think tank. That would have boosted prices for those foods by more than 6%, after adjusting for an expected 0.6% increase in the cost of the same items grown in the U.S.
What’s the long-term outlook — are these tariffs likely to strengthen the U.S. economy or just cause temporary disruption?
Economists say Mr. Trump’s tariffs have increased the risk that the U.S. and other nations could tumble into a recession in the next year. Because tariffs raise prices, Americans are expected to cut back on spending — a potentially major problem given that 70 cents of every $1 in the nation’s gross domestic product is based on consumer spending.
For instance, the tariffs could slow GDP growth to 1.4% in 2025, while core inflation could rise to 3.9% this year, according to an April 2 forecast from Oxford Economics. That would represent a significant slowdown from the economy’s 2.8% growth rate in 2024.
Other experts say leaving sharply higher U.S. tariffs in place could leave much deeper scars. GDP growth could fall by 0.6 percentage points over the next decade, the Yale Budget Lab estimated.
What is the end goal for the Trump administration’s tariffs?
Mr. Trump has said he believes tariffs will bring back manufacturing jobs. By making it more expensive to sell foreign-made goods in the U.S., the president wants to convince American and foreign companies to build factories here.
But he’s also highlighted other goals for his tariff barrage, such as convincing other nations to give more favorable trading terms to the U.S.
Lastly, Mr. Trump has pointed to tariffs as a way to raise billions in revenue for the U.S. government, even though economists point out that tariffs are essentially a sales tax which are paid by American consumers.
Does Mr. Trump really think he’s going to be able to rebuild manufacturing in America again?
Mr. Trump is adamant that tariffs can revive manufacturing in the U.S., which has been on the decline for at least half a century. Yet economists and other experts aren’t so sure.
There are several reasons for their skepticism. For one, building the types of factories and infrastructure to support the manufacturing that is now handled by other nations, such as China and Vietnam, would require years and billions in investment.
The U.S. manufacturing sector has been shrinking for decades, so companies repatriating factories from abroad would struggle to find enough skilled workers, especially in technology and other areas higher up the industrial value chain
And because of the uncertainty caused by Mr. Trump’s tariffs, some businesses might not want to commit to such an investment given that the import duties might disappear or be sharply lowered — as they were today.
What could happen to block the U.S. tariff increases?
Several factors could halt the tariffs imposed by Mr. Trump, according to experts.
First, Congress could introduce a resolution to terminate the emergency declaration used by Mr. Trump to issue the tariffs. Since both the Senate and House are controlled by Republicans, that would require several members of the GOP to join Democrats in voting against Mr. Trump’s tariffs.
But Mr. Trump would likely veto any such measure that reached his desk, which means that two-thirds of both chambers would need to vote in favor of the measure in order to make it veto-proof.
Second, the courts could intervene and rule that Mr. Trump has exceeded his authority. Already, there has been a lawsuit filed by a small business in Florida that argues that Mr. Trump has overstepped by issuing the April 2 tariffs, and that the power should belong to Congress alone.
Third, the violent reaction in financial markets that followed Mr. Trump’s latest tariff salvo could persuade him to change course. His move on Wednesday to pause many of the tariffs followed a five-day plunge in stocks that put the S&P 500 on the verge of entering a bear market — when equities fall at least 20% from their most recent high.
That steep decline in stock prices hurts tens of millions of Americans saving for retirement and could lead them to cut their spending, a big drag on economic growth.
