TREND MACROLYTICS

Donald Luskin argues that tariffs are "inherently small tax hikes because tariffs only apply to, at most, a base of $3.257 trillion-the total value of goods and services the U.S. imports annually" ("How Much Do Tariffs Matter?," op-ed, Jan. 29)... Yet they apply more widely than that. Tariffs make cars and housing more expensive, for example, even when they are made with American steel. When President Trump raised steel tariffs in 2018, Cleveland-Cliffs and U.S. Steel raised their prices, too, largely because they could get away with it. Reducing competition is the point of many tariffs... "No investor can afford to ignore macro... unfortunately, most macroeconomics is useless nonsense." Donald Luskin Chief Investment Officer If the Global Financial Crisis and its aftermath have taught investors anything, it is that every security, every market, every country is profoundly interconnected by powerful macroeconomic forces. Yet typical economic analysis failed to predict the crisis, and..

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