Bilateral deals with major trading partners have rolled in over the last week. The average effective tariff rate on imports to the US sits at its highest level in nearly a century. Tariff revenue is soaring. Financial markets have settled, and stocks have bounced consistently around record highs in recent weeks. Predictions of soaring inflation haven’t come to fruition. The broader US economy has remained remarkably resilient through it all.

For all the volatility in the weeks after Trump’s April 2 “reciprocal” tariff announcement, Trump and his economic advisers held firm in the belief that they’d reach this point. It was a position that ran counter to just about every mainstream economist, was an anathema to the national security and economic pillars of the post-World War II era and cemented the long-running – but no less stunning – ideological evolution on tariffs within the Republican Party that Trump launched with his first presidential campaign.

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