“President Donald Trump [last] Friday rolled back tariffs on more than 200 food products, including such staples as coffee, beef, bananas and orange juice, in the face of growing angst among American consumers about the high cost of groceries…

“Trump also told reporters aboard Air Force One that he would move forward with a $2,000 payment to lower- and middle-income Americans that would be funded by tariff revenues next year sometime. ‘The tariffs allow us to give a dividend if we want to do that. Now we're going to do a dividend and we're also reducing debt,’ he said.” Reuters‍

‍

‍Many on both sides criticize the administration’s tariffs, particularly on groceries:

‍

‍“The administration launched the [tariff] policy under the auspices of a ‘national security’ emergency, but it cast a net so wide that it encompassed coffee, Christmas toys and running shoes. What could go wrong? Now, you’ll be shocked to learn, Trump has been forced to revisit his original strategy… The rollback on some groceries is welcome, but not nearly enough to assuage consumers…

“Year-on-year inflation is running at around 3%, up from 2.4% in March. About half of the increase is attributable to trends in ‘core goods’ (household furnishings, auto parts, vehicles, etc.), the clearest evidence of where Trumponomics is hurting American wallets. The rest of the inflation increase stems from energy prices (electricity and piped gas), which may have more to do with the data-center boom than trade. Food prices are increasing, too, but they’ve made a negligible contribution to the uptick in inflation overall.”

‍Jonathan Levin, Bloomberg

‍

‍“The coffee tariffs are particularly nonsensical. Even those of us who can’t function without four cups a day must admit that coffee is not a strategically sensitive item. Meanwhile, there is no U.S. coffee-growing industry to speak of, and never will be, so there’s nothing to protect or nurture (no offense to the relatively small number of growers in Hawaii)…

“By one estimate, tariffs are costing the average American household roughly $1,800 this year, while more than half of tariffed goods are used to make products here in the United States. It is true that China — a predatory power hostile to the U.S. — is a special case and that threatening tariffs can be a way to gain leverage in negotiations, but arguably Trump’s most significant economic initiative has been to increase prices on consumers after winning a campaign on the promise that he’d lower them.”

‍The Editors, National Review‍

‍

‍Other opinions below.