Tariffs, Trade Policy, and Economic Strategy: Expert Insights
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/03/01 (Unpublished)
Ian Fletcher is an economist and author specializing in industrial policy, trade, and economic strategy. His books include Industrial Policy for the United States and Free Trade Doesn’t Work. A former Senior Economist at the Coalition for a Prosperous America, he now serves on its Advisory Board, shaping U.S. economic policy discussions. James Crask is Managing Director at Marsh, specializing in risk management, resilience, and crisis strategy. A former UK Cabinet Office advisor, he chairs the ISO committee on business continuity and authored a key industry book. Tim Rosenberger is a Legal Policy Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a Stanford Graduate School of Business Fellow, specializing in constitutional law, litigation, and public policy. His expertise spans legal research, judicial clerkships, entrepreneurship, urban development, and policy analysis on trade, immigration, and economic reform.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: How do the tariffs relate to inflation, costs of goods and services, and price increases, generally speaking?
Ian Fletcher: Obviously, if you push tariffs high enough, they will produce inflation, at least for the products in question. But the experience of tariffs during Trump’s first term showed, empirically, that the kind of moderate tariffs the US should be imposing have little or no inflationary impact. This ran directly opposite to mainstream theory on this question, and should make people skeptical of believing what mainstream economists are saying today. For a start, we saw a lot of exporters sacrifice profit margins. Furthermore, imports are only about 16% of the U.S. economy, so 84% of the economy isn’t even potentially exposed to inflationary pressure from tariffs.
James Crask: The Trump administration has outlined proposed tariffs on goods from China, Mexico and Canada and US-based organizations are bracing for significant cost shifts in their supply chains.
Marsh recently analyzed more than 120,000 suppliers that support global clients with significant operations in the US. It found that 40% of their direct and indirect suppliers providing goods to the US are based in Mexico, China, and Canada. This means that, on average, about one-fifth of an organization’s direct supplier base originates from these three countries.
Global events, beyond just tariffs, including geopolitical tensions and climate-related events are challenging organizations’ supply chain resilience and elevating supply chain risk management to the top of every corporate agenda.
Marsh’s analysis also found that:
- More than 1 in 10 supplier sites are at high risk of natural disasters, with flooding and earthquakes representing the greatest risks
- 65% of organizations have at least one single point of failure / bottleneck hidden in their supply chain that is providing something critical.
This data was derived from Sentrisk, Marsh’s AI powered platform that enables companies to comprehensively map their supply chains across all tiers and pinpoint low, medium, and high-risk vulnerabilities down to a site, supplier or component-specific level.
If you would like to speak to James on what the data shows re: possible outcomes of ‘reciprocal tariffs’ on U.S. trading partners, how companies are managing increasing global supply chain risks, and the overall supply chain risk landscape as we head into 2025 – I am happy to schedule a conversation.
Tim Rosenberger: Tariffs generally increase prices. At the same time, President Trump’s tariffs are designed to encourage strategic reshoring of jobs and the reindustrialization of the American heartline. While the tech-fueled economic boom of the coasts masks the collapse of middle America, many communities now have real incomes that are ~half what they were fifty years ago. Almost no family can survive on a single income and countless Americans stitch together a constellation of jobs to eek by on modest incomes and limited benefits. They work longer hours and enjoy fewer protections than the factory workers of yesteryear. So, if President Trump can succeed in his tariff and trade policy, modest price increases will be more than offset by gains in earnings, particularly for working Americans. Expect any short term economic pain and trade conflicts to be well worth a revitalized American middle.
Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time.
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