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Oh, I see... And here I was, saying to my students just earlier today that you can't put a tariff on services trade... I guess I'll have to revisit that issue next lecture. Sigh. Teaching trade policy in 2025 is not that great unless you actually like to constantly revise your teaching materials!

And now we wait for EOs. As a lot of people pointed out, this is not going to stop and it will be interesting to see how all the deals hold up, whether or not there will be any exemptions and how these tariffs are applied. Never a dull moment.

European Commission seems confident: “The United States intends to promptly ensure that the tariff rate (…) applied to originating goods of the European Union subject to Section 232 actions on pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, and lumber does not exceed 15%.”

Calling all students: You could have access to a free FT subscription without even knowing it. Check here: www.ft.com/schoolsarefree

Åh, vilken praktisk tillfällighet!

If you want some slow TV over the next few days, Swedish TV is live streaming the relocation of a 113 year old wooden church in Kiruna. It's being shifted to a new site 5km away. www.svtplay.se/video/KnDgQ9...

I would like to submit a request that there be no more trade deal press conferences until a trade deal is actually done. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Reading about divided EU member state opinions on Trump's tariffs, I still think the essential problem is they think he wants a deal, whereas all evidence suggests he really wants tariffs. Only countries to have done deals just get a small reduction. Given this, what is the EU aim?

Tricky question, but @aleichthammer.bsky.social and @etiennehoera.d-64.social make some very good points in this piece. Well worth reading.

Good morning. It is now 12:01 AM, which means tariffs on nearly all steel & aluminum have been raised to 50%. That includes an increase in the tariffs on steel & aluminum content in derivatives, plus a new tariff on derivatives' non-metal content based on country-level tariffs

It's kind of insane, though by this point entirely understandable, that Trump's threatened FIFTY PER CENT tariffs on steel from TOMORROW and everyone's like "I mean what can we do, it'll happen or it won't".

With the US already facing shortages of many essential medications, experts warn that Beijing could potentially exploit this reliance as leverage in an escalating trade war. cnn.it/4jBT2NA

thanks @robarmstrong.bsky.social

🚨 New WP! 📄 "Publish or Procreate: The Effect of Motherhood on Research Performance" (w/ @valentinatartari.bsky.social 👩‍🔬👨‍🔬 We investigate how parenthood affects scientific productivity and impact — and find that the impact is far from equal for mothers and fathers.

11/ If I were a betting man, I would guess that either the Trump administration never actually levies these 50 per cent tariffs and a deal emerges - or Trump does, Europe retaliates, and a while later a China-style rollback is negotiated where Trump gets none of what he wants. That's my guess. 🤷‍♂️

🚨Trump says he wants a 50% tariff on the EU starting in 9 days

NEW from me: Trump's 90-day pause on the China trade war still leaves tariffs at the highest level since the Great Depression—and that's before upcoming sector-specific tariffs or possible un-pausing Trump may be easing his trade war, but he's far from ending it🧵 www.apricitas.io/p/trumps-ret...

Together with Roine Vestman and others, we're seeking a research assistant to work with household data and answer questions in macroeconomics and finance. The position is at Stockholm University and for 12 months, starting in September 2025 at the latest. Please share: su.varbi.com/what:job/job...

Today is the international day against homophobia, biphobia, intersexphobia and transphobia #IDAHOBIT 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ Standing up for each other has never been more important. At the ECB we are raising the pride flag to show our support for the LGBT+ community across the world 🌎

Hey people who are EU citizens, please sign this petition to ban conversion therapy EU wide. It's a practice that's very harmful towards LGBTQ+ people. It's already banned in some countries but we need a EU wide ban! eci.ec.europa.eu/043/public/#... #europe #lgbtq #germany

The tariffs are staying... Howard Lutnick today on UK preliminary deal: "“We started at 10% and we ended at 10%." www.bloomberg.com/news/live-bl...

European and Asian carmakers face steep shipping costs to US on top of tariffs https://www.ft.com/content/31ae831f-9742-48a4-9226-005891b26900

Simon is making an important point here:

On Trump's "movie tariffs". Interested in the views of US lawyers. My plain-reading is that International Economic Emergency Powers Act (IEEPA) specifically excludes messing with movies from the broad authorities it gives the President. 👇 www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/...

If Trump is serious about tariffs on movies, it's a very dangerous escalation. Tariffs have not traditionally been applied to services, and the United States is a massive net exporter of services. We would be extremely vulnerable to any service-based retaliation.

The Port of Los Angeles--the country's largest container port--is currently projecting a 20% decline in import containers over the next three weeks relative to last year. This is what the beginning of a supply chain crisis looks like--hopefully we can stop it there.

I'd caution against pushing this message too hard. Fundementally these deals are just extortion payments, and Trump sets the ransom. If he decides he wants the optics of lots of "deals" more than he cares about the substance of what's in them, he'll have no problem signing many "deals" quickly.

Foreign students considering whether to attend college in the US are looking at a new landscape, including the revocation of hundreds of student visas. If they choose to take their dollars elsewhere, it could spell financial trouble for the US colleges that rely on them.

It will reduce quality of life and shrink the economy. Why? If you can’t trust baby food to not kill your kid, you make your own. If you can’t trust toys to not kill your kid you buy fewer toys, focusing on a few trustworthy brands. If you can’t trust planes not to crash you fly less.

I’ve gotten used to not knowing what tariffs are going to be in the near future, but not knowing what tariffs are *in the present* is an interesting plot twist

Very informative chart from Washington Post

Appreciate the relatively concrete details on alternatives to tariffs on goods trade in this FT piece: on.ft.com/4lvBCV6

🚨 We just released a paper examining the long-terms economic impacts of "Liberation Day" tariffs. In summary: while these tariffs may help reduce the trade deficit, they will impose significant costs on the U.S. economy after retaliation by trade partners.

This! Similar problem with tourism.

That's in addition to 25% "sectoral" tariffs on steel & autos. Plus pharma tariffs coming. Firms still have no idea what tariffs will be in 90 days, so are pausing investment decisions. We are significantly worse off today than we were pre-"Liberation Day" and press coverage should reflect that

This is driving me crazy too. Not long ago 10% universal tariffs were considered the worst-case scenario, something even Trump wasn’t crazy enough to impose. Now have those PLUS 125% tariffs on China. Together, these raise raise inflation by about as much as original “Liberation Day” tariffs did!

Glad this is raised, cause I'm frankly not sure how the US (well, Trump) will react when the first batch of EU tariffs are implemented.

Question that I haven't seen addressed: The "pause" (=still tariff, but 10%) on all but China was explicitly linked to only China retaliating. As far as I know, the first batch of EU's retaliation against steel and aluminum tariffs are still set to come into force soon. Will Trump really not react?

4. During this pause, the United States will still have the highest tariffs in the industrialized world, perhaps 10-20 times that of most of our trading partners, and roughly ten times higher than it was before. These are still at or above the Depression era Smoot-Hawley tariffs

New trade Russian roulette - you send your container to the US and try to guess what tariffs will apply on the day it gets there.

Markets are reacting as if it’s over. We still face yuge China tariffs, the 10% tariff, and auto, iron and steel tariffs. That’s a whole lot of tariffs going on. Worse is the uncertainty Trump thrives on while it paralyzes business. What happens in 90 days? Uncertainty will kill new investment.

Well the good news is that after this it doesn’t really matter how much higher either America or China raises tariffs because trade between the two of them is going to zero at tariffs this high

something I haven't seen yet: isn't a massive increase in the range of goods worth smuggling going to be a big boost to exactly the kind of cross-border organized crime the WH claims it wants to stop?

The number of people surprised that Trump has done exactly what he said he would is remarkable. There have been no surprises. It was all there during the campaign.

Plus we don't really have estimates relevant for this magnitude. From a 5yr negotiation and 5-10% change it's hard to extrapolate.

Quite. Standard trade models will tell you first-order impact of Trump tariffs will be substantial/significant, but not disastrous: add in retaliation and it gets worse, but not catastrophic. But we can't quantify either confidence/uncertainty risks, or tail risks (eg in financial markets)

Agreed. Also applies to universities. Will students from the rest of the world continue going to the US to get an education?

This:

It’s darkly funny how the president lied about everything except literally one thing from which he has never deviated in his entire life and it was him sticking to this one thing that caused Wall Street to go “How could he trick us like that? We’ve been heckin’ bamboozled!”