President Trump is on a winning streak, if you trust the news. The New York Times declared recently that “Trump is winning his trade wars.” The Hill says he’s on a “hot streak.” The Associated Press claims “Trump is getting the economy he wants.”
All this stems from a flurry of trade deals Trump has negotiated leading up to his self-declared Aug. 1 deadline for trading partners to make deals or face his wrath.
But this isn’t winning. Trump is shackling the US economy and threatening his own political future. His tariffs will inevitably weaken the economy and rattle voters who are already losing faith in Trump’s ability to safeguard their prosperity.
Trump’s supposed “wins” of late include trade deals with South Korea, Japan, Indonesia, and the European Union. Still in the works are deals with Canada, Mexico, and China, the top three US trading partners. Most of the deals announced so far lack specifics and may be more like frameworks for deals that will take months to hammer out.
Wall Street likes them anyway. Under the newly minted deals, imports from those countries will face a tax to enter the United States, typically ranging from 15% to 20%. That’s not as bad as the 25% tariff or more that some analysts feared. Trump is also reaching these deals without facing any retaliation, such as tariffs on US exports similar to Trump’s tariffs on imports. US stocks have been rising on the news.
Hooray!
The average tax on imports is soaring from about 2.5% before Trump took office to around 18%, according to the Yale Budget Lab. That’s certainly an odd win. The tariffs are cutting into profits at Ford (F), General Motors (GM), Procter & Gamble (PG), and many other American companies, including some that say they’ll have to pass the higher costs on to consumers through higher prices. Shoppers will face renewed inflationary pressures and a slowdown in hiring likely to come from slower growth.
Trump tariff defenders argue that economists have been wrong about inflation because it hasn’t shown up yet. But that is probably just a matter of timing. Producers and merchants stocked up on imports during the first quarter, knowing the Trump tariffs were coming. They bought a lot less in the second quarter, when many new tariffs were in effect. That is only now beginning to show up in everyday prices. But the early signs show inflation picking up exactly where you’d expect import tariffs to hit.
Inflation data for June showed unusual month-to-month increases in the cost of appliances, toys, clothing, and sporting goods. Imports dominate those product sectors, so if you were looking for tariff-related inflation, that’s where you’d find it. “Tariffs [are] beginning to rear their ugly head,” Oxford Economics explained in a July 15 analysis. “Tariff impacts on the economy are still in the pipeline.”
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It’s an open question whether Trump’s import taxes will raise prices enough to cause consumers serious pain. The Yale Budget Lab expects higher tariffs to cost the typical household about $2,100 per year, once importers, suppliers, and consumers have adjusted to higher prices by shifting their business strategies and buying habits.
If the government forced every family in the US to cough up an extra $2,100 per year, there would be national outrage and maybe revolt. The tariffs won’t work like that. Part of the cost to families will be gradually rising prices, some noticeable, others not. Economists generally think the tariffs will push the annual inflation rate from 2.7% now to the high threes or maybe 4%. It’s already up from a low of 2.3% in April. But 4% isn’t nearly as painful as the 9% inflation from 2022.
Read more: What Trump’s tariffs mean for the economy and your wallet
Other parts of the cost to families will come from slower economic growth, which in turn will mean lower pay than some workers would otherwise earn and slightly higher unemployment. Tariffs are inefficient, introducing new costs and barriers to trade. That hurts growth.
Trump may hope the costs of his trade wars are imperceptible to most Americans. But he’s hedging. Trump wants Congress to pass legislation to send “tariff rebates” of $600 or more to most taxpayers, drawing the funds from new tariff revenue the Treasury is collecting. Thoughtful voters might ask why Trump is imposing new taxes on one hand, then offering relief from those taxes through a rebate. Wouldn’t it be better to do nothing in the first place?
Given that type of complexity, most Americans will struggle to determine exactly how tariffs are affecting them. But most voters know that Trump is toying with tariffs. They also know Trump signed a big set of tax cuts into law in early July and that Trump is slashing a wide range of government agencies. Trump is forcing a lot of highly visible change on the economy, which means Trump owns the consequences.
Voters may already be blaming him for the problems they see. Trump’s approval rating for his handling of the economy dropped from 42% in February to 37% in July, according to Gallup. His overall approval rating dropped from 47% when he took office to 37%.
Winners don’t usually lose popularity.
Trump inherited a very prickly electorate when he took office in January. Voters chose Trump in the 2024 presidential race in large part because they wanted him to bring prices down and create more opportunity than they experienced during the Biden years. Trump, so far, is doing the opposite. GDP growth in the first half of 2025 was a weak 1.3%, a percentage point lower than in 2024. Spending is slowing down, and inflation is already higher than economists expected late last year after Trump won the election. Consumer confidence has mostly fallen since Trump took office, with the University of Michigan sentiment index nearly as low as it was at the moment of peak inflation in 2022.
If Trump is winning, then it’s ordinary Americans he’s winning against.
Rick Newman is a senior columnist for Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Bluesky and X: @rickjnewman.
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