Well, yeah. Strategic tariffs can serve a positive function. Spraying them randomly does not.

I'm not even convinced that lowering our trade deficit with China is necessarily beneficial. But we have lowered our overall trade deficit, and that is probably good news. Except I'm a bit suspicious of that as well -- how much of it was just deciding not to import anything at all due to tariff uncertainty?

Which, as the article points out, is actually kinda perplexing. Inflation is still too high, but somehow it hasn't increased all that much despite policies designed to increase consumer prices. The article suggests it's being absorbed by the importers and exporters rather than passed on to consumers, which doesn't sound stable to me.

Something isn't adding up. And we'll see, though it's impossible to predict when. The economy can take years to show effects. It's actually kinda remarkable that the tariffs have had such an immediate effect on trade deficits.