Are tariffs good? Ever? Under what circumstances. Voldemort exceed?

Miran argues that reasonable tariffs are good for the the US, our manufacturing sector and the economy. I happen to agree with that. Did Voldemort go way beyond what's reasonable to negotiate with China and the EU? Did it accomplish much? Was he successful?

Like, DOGE I think the tariff wars accomplished little and were eventually brought to a close as the Supreme Court clipped his wings. So much for the court being a rubber stamp to the Dark Lord.

Ironically, today tariffs stand closer to "optimal" after Trump's rebuke.

That does not mean that the Dark Lord's grab of Venezuela and actions in the Middle East to put his hand on the oil scale haven't been monumental more impactful. They have and they will continue to be.

Below is Gemini's analysis for some nuance after the story by the WSJ.

The Low-Tax Case for Tariffs

The experience of the Trump trade policy confirms that the optimal rate for levies on imports is greater than zero.

By Stephen Miran, WSJ

June 26, 2026 5:57 pm ET

Tariff proponents offer a variety of justifications for raising levies from the near-zero average levels that prevailed before last year. The reasons range widely, from the need to protect manufacturing for defense purposes, to inducing trading partners to lower their trade barriers. But one important reason for preferring high tariff rates remains underappreciated: their role in the overall system of taxation.

Every tax distorts economic behavior. A tax on income discourages work, while a tax on investment discourages saving. Economists weigh these distortions—called deadweight loss—against each other and against the benefits of government services in a field called optimal tax theory.

Two centuries of optimal-tariff research show that tariffs are unique in that foreigners bear a material portion of the tax burden. In comparison, the domestic economy shoulders the entirety of taxes on labor or capital income. Since tariffs discourage the purchase of imported goods, a country that implements them and has significant market power will effectively force foreign sellers to reduce prices over time. These companies risk losing too many consumers if they don’t keep their prices competitive despite the levies.

As tariffs force some of the distortionary cost onto the foreign exporter, overall national welfare (including tariff revenue) increases when lifting tariffs from low levels. But above zero, where’s the optimal level? Determining this requires finding the point at which the domestically borne share of distortions becomes so large that it overwhelms the tariff revenue. The optimal tariff is the top of an inverted-U curve of options, similar in shape to the Laffer curve. There are a broad range of estimates, but most of the literature by my analysis puts the optimal tariff in the region of 10% to 40%. Traditional estimates for the U.S. indicate that in the long run exporters will bear 70% of the burden of tariffs.

The standard criticism from trade economists is that optimal tariffs only work in theory because in practice retaliatory trade measures from other countries erode the benefits of our trade levies.

Experience, however, has disproved this objection. The Trump administration warned allies that retaliation would make it harder to sustain the U.S. defense umbrella and argued that because America is the largest source of global consumer demand, other countries need our markets more than we need theirs. Retaliation has been minimal. Since President Trump secured deals with many trading partners to reduce their own trade barriers against the U.S., tariffs have effectively improved many other nations’ openness to American imports—the opposite of the standard objection.

This leaves one conclusion: Raising tariffs from the near-zero levels that prevailed before January 2025 toward optimal levels was an improvement. Far from creating marginal deadweight loss, raising them toward optimal levels is actually welfare-enhancing. And tariff revenue can be used to reduce highly distortionary taxes on capital or labor. Doing so is particularly effective because deadweight loss increases faster with higher tax rates—going from a 40% rate to 50% has a much higher cost than jumping from 10% to 20%. The median lifetime marginal rate on income is an astonishingly high 39%, according to recent research.

Congress and the president effectively chose this exact trade-off in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025. Tariff revenue will largely cover the act’s tax cuts for domestic workers and businesses, assuming the administration follows through on its promise to return to the rates that were in place at the start of this year. Based on those rates, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that tariff revenue would exceed $4 trillion over a decade. From an optimal tax perspective, this trade-off is a big win. In the long run, efficiency costs of tariffs are largely borne by foreigners and efficiency gains of lower domestic rates by Americans.

It’s even more of a victory given how the 2025 tax cut incorporated full expensing of equipment. If a tariff drives up the cost of an input or intermediate good, the purchaser is very likely able to get that back on tax returns—making tariffs even less of a burden on Americans. Effectively, intermediate goods are largely untariffed, as economists have long advocated.

You don’t have to depart from classical tax theory to see that tariffs have a role to play in tax policy. Without retaliation, using tariff revenue to reduce or preserve low marginal tax rates on other income is a big improvement. Tariffs have earned a permanent place in the tax system, and economic consensus is slowly coming to appreciate it.

Mr. Miran is senior strategist at Hudson Bay Capital Management and served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers and a Federal Reserve governor, 2025-26.

The article above is an op-ed written by Stephen Miran, who served as the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers and a Federal Reserve Governor during the second Trump administration. Because he was a key architect of these very policies, the piece serves as a defense of his administration’s record rather than an objective, consensus economic analysis.  

Whether the article is "correct" depends on which economic school of thought you follow, but looking at the hard data from 2025 and 2026 reveals that President Trump has frequently deviated well beyond the 10% to 40% "optimal tariff" range cited in the article to use tariffs as aggressive negotiating leverage.  

1. Is the Article's Economic Logic "Correct"?

Miran relies on Optimal Tax Theory, arguing that a large economy like the U.S. can force foreign exporters to absorb the costs of tariffs. However, this perspective is highly controversial among mainstream economists:  

• The Counter-Argument: Most trade economists maintain that tariffs function as a consumption tax on domestic buyers. While Miran argues that "foreigners bear a material portion of the tax burden," multiple empirical studies show that American businesses and consumers bear the brunt of the costs through higher supply chain expenses and consumer prices.  

• The Retaliation Factor: Miran claims retaliation has been "minimal" because partners need U.S. consumer demand. In reality, trading partners like China have retaliated dynamically—such as implementing sweeping export controls on critical rare earths and magnets in 2025, which choked U.S. defense and technology supply chains until a tactical truce was reached.  

2. Did Trump Deviate from the "Optimal" Tariff Range?

Yes. While Miran’s analysis defines the optimal tariff zone as 10% to 40%, Trump’s actual second-term trade maneuvers against China and the EU have regularly blown past those boundaries to force negotiations.  

China: Way Above the "Optimal" Limit

In his efforts to combat synthetic opioid trafficking and enforce reciprocity, Trump pushed tariffs on China into unprecedented territory:  

• Peak Rates: Combined "fentanyl tariffs" and "reciprocal tariffs" spiked rates on certain Chinese goods to as high as 145%.

• The Negotiation: This extreme deviation was intentionally used as a blunt instrument. It successfully forced Beijing to the negotiating table, resulting in a temporary deal where the U.S. lowered fentanyl-related tariffs by 10 percentage points and suspended heightened reciprocal tariffs in exchange for agricultural purchases and a pause on rare earth export curbs.  

The EU and Sector-Specific Tariffs

Trump similarly bypassed the 40% ceiling when dealing with Europe and heavy industries:  

• Metals and Appliances: Trump escalated Section 232 tariffs to a flat 50% on all steel, aluminum, and copper imports. He later expanded these heavy duties to major household appliances.  

• The Exception: Only select allies who negotiated concessions (like the UK, which was kept at 25%) stayed within Miran’s theoretical "optimal" range.  

The Reality Check: Court Invalidation

While Trump attempted to levy massive universal tariffs (such as a 10% blanket tax using emergency powers) that would fit within Miran's framework, the legal system heavily constrained him.  

In February 2026, the Supreme Court ruled that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) did not grant the president the authority to impose sweeping global tariffs.  

Following the ruling, the administration had to pivot to temporary measures under the Trade Act of 1974. Due to these legal defeats and subsequent trade deals, the overall average effective U.S. tariff rate sat at 11.8%, dragging the macro-level numbers back into Miran's optimal zone—even if Trump's initial targets for China and the EU were vastly higher.