ExplainSpeaking: How Trump’s tariffs have run into an affordability crisis

Dear Readers,

In November last year, Donald Trump scripted one of the most remarkable political comebacks in American politics to become the US president for the second time. There were two central aspects of his winning pitch: Containing and regulating immigration, and addressing the cost-of-living crisis fuelled by high inflation during the Biden Presidency.

All indications were that the second Trump presidency would be an even more decisive — even if possibly more divisive — than the first.

And to a great extent, this was true as well — best captured by his insistence on slapping tariffs, often prohibitively high ones, on almost all countries of the world.

Trump’s idea was that imposing tariffs would force companies across the world to come back to the US to set up production, thu