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One Year After "Liberation Day," Did Trump's Tariffs Deliver?

April 2, 2026 · 39 min

Show notes

On April 2, 2025, President Trump announced sweeping "reciprocal" tariffs on Liberation Day, promising an investment boom, massive revenue, debt reduction, and lower prices. One year later, Kyle Hulehan and Erica York dig into the data to see how those promises held up.

0:00 - Liberation Day speech recap
2:00 - Were the tariffs actually "reciprocal"?
5:30 - The real math behind the tariff formula
10:00 - Market reactions and policy chaos
14:00 - The promised investment boom that never arrived
17:30 - Tariff revenue vs. projections and the national debt
22:00 - Who actually paid the tariffs?
25:30 - Business uncertainty and real-world impacts
29:30 - Could any version of these tariffs have worked?
36:00 - The five broken promises of Liberation Day
37:00 - What comes next after the Supreme Court ruling

Resources:
Tax Foundation Tariff Tracker: https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/federal/trump-tariffs-trade-war/
Tax Foundation Trade & Tariff Research: https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/federal/topics/trade/
Subscribe to the Tax Foundation: https://taxfoundation.org/subscribe/

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