“The dirty little secret of international trade economics is that moderate tariff rates” don’t have huge price effects, Krugman said on Bloomberg Television’s Wall Street Week with David Westin before the CAP report came out. “To get really big (inflation) numbers, you have to get well beyond 10%,” he said.

When inflation was rampant during the Covid years, few items rose in price more than gasoline, airline tickets and – of all things – eggs. Of course, none of these items were impacted by the tariff regimes imposed by former President Trump and continued under President Biden. In fact, some tariffed items even saw prices below core inflation in the first year of the Section 301 tariffs against China imports.

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