“I call it a ring around the country. We have a ring around the country,” Trump said in a Time magazine interview released Tuesday, referring to aggressive tariffs he has promised to impose in a second term. “I also don’t believe that the costs will go up that much.” The presumptive Republican presidential nominee has repeatedly pledged to hike tariffs, cut taxes and encourage cheap money policy if he wins the November election.
But that inflationary impact “could be partially absorbed in the near term,” the Wells Fargo analysts added, explaining that many suppliers have started to diversify their inventory away from “tariff-exposed product.” The Trump-era tariffs on China that nearly started a trade war had only a “marginal” effect on the economy, according to the Wells Fargo report: “The surge in consumer price inflation is primarily attributed to the pandemic’s disruptions rather than the trade war’s tariffs.