Trump’s economy is marked by uncertainty. What could more tariffs mean for you?

Summary

Podcast Summary: Consider This from NPR

Episode Title: Trump’s economy is marked by uncertainty. What could more tariffs mean for you?
Host: Scott Detrow
Guest: Scott Horsley, NPR Chief Economic Correspondent
Date: October 1, 2025

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Overview

This episode examines the uncertainty facing the U.S. economy under President Trump’s sweeping new tariffs, which now affect a wide array of imported goods. Host Scott Detrow and NPR’s chief economic correspondent Scott Horsley discuss where tariffs have already been imposed, which industries are newly targeted, the unpredictable policy environment, its impact on businesses and consumers, and the looming legal challenges. The conversation also addresses how Trump’s tough immigration and federal workforce policies interact with broader economic trends and the ongoing government shutdown.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. New and Ongoing Tariffs: The Scope Continues to Grow

• Targeted Industries:
  • New tariffs announced on softwood lumber and a threatened tax on foreign films ([02:50]).
  • Existing tariffs now extend to branded pharmaceuticals, kitchen cabinets, bathroom vanities, bananas, coffee, and many other goods ([04:05]).
• Steep Rates:
  • Current average tariff rate stands close to 18%, a sharp rise from 2.5% before Trump’s second term.
  • This is the highest average since the 1930s ([04:05]).

2. Tariff Uncertainty & Implementation

• Policy Volatility:
  • The President often announces tariffs via social media; some threats are implemented while others are paused or reversed ([03:15], [06:58]).
  • Example: Trump threatened taxes on foreign films in the past without following through.
• Industry Reaction:
  • Businesses, especially importers, are struggling to plan as tariff regimes can change weekly or even overnight ([06:31], [06:58]).

3. Economic Impacts – Stock Market, Manufacturing, and Agriculture

• Stock Market Recovery:
  • Initial market drops when tariffs began; market has since adjusted ([04:58]).
• Inflationary Pressure:
  • Tariffs are raising prices, notably contributors like lumber and coffee ([05:47]).
  • Investors currently judge these price increases as manageable, for now.
• Manufacturing Struggles:
  • Factories, the supposed beneficiaries, are harmed by uncertainty and higher costs ([05:47]).
  • NPR’s Scott Horsley:

    “It’s odd because, you know, domestic factories are supposed to be the beneficiaries of the president’s trade policies. Instead, they’ve really been struggling.” ([00:49], [05:47])

• Agricultural Strain:
  • U.S. farmers, especially in soybeans, hurt by foreign boycotts (e.g., China not buying U.S. soybeans) ([05:47]).
  • Trump proposes using tariff revenue to aid farmers, but most prefer open markets over government aid.

4. Business Paralysis & Consumer Fallout

• Planning Difficulties:
  • Businesses cannot reliably forecast costs or supply chains due to sudden tariff shifts.
  • Example from Scott Detrow: A Virginia distillery doesn’t know when or where to order glass bottles ([06:31]).
• Broader Economic Uncertainty:
  • Importers flying blind on costs; shifting suppliers now carries risk, as tariffs may follow to new countries ([06:58]).
  • U.S. companies are hesitant to invest domestically due to the unstable trade environment ([07:30]).
  • Quote:

    “You have companies that have said they’d like to set up shop here in the United States, but they don’t know what their competitive posture is going to be because the the tariff target keeps changing.” – Scott Horsley ([07:30])

5. Legal Challenges and the Supreme Court

• Tariff Authority Questioned:
  • Most new tariffs were implemented under a 1970s law (“IIPA”), which critics say doesn’t authorize tariffs at all.
  • Lower courts have unanimously agreed with critics, now awaiting Supreme Court arguments ([08:17]).
  • If overturned, substantial tariffs could be rescinded and the government forced to refund collected duties.
  • Horsley:

    “If the high court agrees with the lower courts, then a lot of these tariffs will just go away, and the government may even have to refund some of that $30 billion a month that it’s been collecting.” ([08:17])

6. Immigration Crackdown & Labor Market Effects

• Sharp Drop in Immigration:
  • Net outflow of immigrants possible for first time in 60+ years ([09:40]).
  • Resulting in a significant labor shortage and reduced consumer demand.
  • Lack of immigrants impacts overall economic output—providing both labor and spending power.
  • Immigration and job market data:

    “It would be nice to have a really clear picture of what’s happening both with the job market and with the workforce. Unfortunately, a key report ... has now been postponed as a result of the government shutdown.” ([10:43])

7. Government Shutdown & Data ‘Blindness’

• Limited Macroeconomic Effects—Unless Layoffs Increase:
  • Past shutdowns mainly caused temporary disruptions; could worsen if mass layoffs materialize ([11:24]).
• Loss of Federal Economic Data:
  • Policymakers and businesses “flying blind” as government agencies are unable to collect and release key jobs, inflation, and GDP data ([12:03]).
  • Horsley:

    “Now some of their key navigational instruments have been covered up with black electrical tape. That’s marked government shutdown. So, you know, they’re flying blind. A lot of businesses are flying blind, to be sure.” ([12:47])

  • Private data sources exist but lack the government’s reach and reliability.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Policy Outcomes:

  “Domestic factories are supposed to be the beneficiaries of the president’s trade policies. Instead, they’ve really been struggling.”
  — Scott Horsley ([00:49], [05:47])

• On Market Uncertainty:

  “Well, as you say, it’s just really hard to plan a business when you don’t know what your costs are going to be a week from now, let alone six months from now. And if the president can impose a 50% tax via social media post, that’s really worrisome.”
  — Scott Horsley ([06:58])

• On Legal Limits:

  “If the high court agrees with the lower courts, then a lot of these tariffs will just go away, and the government may even have to refund some of that $30 billion a month that it’s been collecting.”
  — Scott Horsley ([08:17])

• On the Shutdown’s Broader Impact:

  “Now some of their key navigational instruments have been covered up with black electrical tape. That’s marked government shutdown. So, you know, they’re flying blind. A lot of businesses are flying blind, to be sure.”
  — Scott Horsley ([12:47])

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [00:00] - Introduction: President Trump’s renewed tariff push
• [02:30] - Conversation with Scott Horsley begins
• [02:50] - New tariffs on lumber and movies explained
• [04:05] - Summary of where tariffs have been imposed and how rates compare to history
• [04:58] - Discussion of market reaction, inflation, and who suffers from tariffs
• [06:31] - Impact of uncertainty on business and consumer planning
• [08:17] - Legal challenges and Supreme Court review
• [09:40] - Immigration crackdown and its effect on the labor market
• [11:24] - Government shutdown and implications for federal workers and the economy
• [12:47] - How loss of government economic data intensifies uncertainty

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Tone and Language

• The discussion is clear, direct, and conversational, aimed at demystifying a complex economic policy issue and its real-world impacts.
• The mood mixes urgency (regarding business and economic uncertainty) with a matter-of-fact, analytical delivery.
• Both Detrow and Horsley note the unpredictable, up-in-the-air nature of policy, legal authority, and economic planning throughout the episode.

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Conclusion

This episode delivers a succinct, illuminating update for listeners concerned about how President Trump’s expanding tariff agenda—and the broader climate of political and economic uncertainty—affects them. Layered atop the trade war are immigration crackdowns, a government shutdown, and a pending Supreme Court ruling that together compound the difficulties facing American businesses, workers, and consumers. The main message: The economy is experiencing unprecedented unpredictability, and all eyes are on the courts, Congress, and the White House as pivotal decisions loom.

Transcript

[Scott Detrow]

When President Trump returned to the White House, he promised to fuel an economic boom with a magic bullet. Tariffs.

[NPR Announcer]

President Trump. Sweeping global tariffs for more than 90 countries have come into effect. A further 25% tariff on India, 50% tax on kitchen cabinets and bathroom vanities.

[Scott Detrow]

A 100% levy on branded drug imports into the United States. Money is coming in as a result of the tariffs, more than $30 billion a month so far from a wide range of goods. The president celebrated influx of tariff revenue last week and unveiled additional sweeping tariffs because of tariffs. We're doing unbelievable. We're making more money than we ever have made. But what all of this means long term for American consumers and American businesses is still unclear. NPR's Scott Horsley says some sectors are being hit hard.

[Scott Horsley]

It's odd because, you know, domestic factories are supposed to be the beneficiaries of the president's trade policies. Instead, they've really been struggling.

[Scott Detrow]

Consider this, eight months into Trump's second term, we still don't yet know what impact these tariffs will have on the economy. The president keeps rolling out new ones anyway. From npr, I'm Scott Detrow.

[Throughline Podcast Host]

On the Throughline podcast from npr, Immigration enforcement might be more visible now, but this moment didn't begin with President Trump's second inauguration or even his first, a series from Throughline about how immigration became political and a cash cow. Listen to Throughline in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Short Wave thinks of science as an invisible force showing up in your everyday life, powering the food you eat, the medicine you use, the tech in your pocket. Science is approachable because it's already part of your life. Come explore these connections on the shortwave podcast from NPR. On NPR's wild card podcast, actor Matthew McConaughey says it's important not to over commit creatively.

[Scott Detrow]

What can happen.

[Scott Horsley]

And where ambition has led me astray is you end up with a bunch of fricking campfires and no bonfires.

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Listen or watch that Wild card conversation on YouTube, the NPR app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Scott Detrow]

It's consider this from npr. Here with me to talk about the impact of President Trump's tariffs on trade policy on the economy is NPR chief economic correspondent Scott Horsley. Thanks for being here.

[Scott Horsley]

Great to be with you.

[Scott Detrow]

So let's start with this week's news, this latest round of tariffs. Trump says he's rolling out new tariffs. What is the latest industry to be targeted?

[Scott Horsley]

Yeah, it's going to be hard to keep up, but I think this week the president has targeted softwood, lumber, and movies. Now, we already have pretty steep tariffs on lumber from Canada, but the President apparently thinks those are not high enough and he's disappointed to see movie production in countries other than the United States. So he's threatened, not for the first time, to add a tax on those, although it's not entirely clear how that would be calculated.

[Scott Detrow]

That gets to my next question, though. The President will threaten tariffs, then not implement them, or he'll put them into effect, and then they'll be paused or the courts will weigh in. This latest round, how likely do we think these are to actually be implemented? And how is industry responding?

[Scott Horsley]

Yeah, it is hard to say. As you point out, some of Trump's tariff threats never really materialize. He's threatened, for example, to tax foreign films before, and we didn't see any movement on that. But you can't just dismiss these tariff threats out of hand, because a lot of them he does follow through on. Last week, the President threatened to impose tariffs on name brand pharmaceuticals and kitchen cabinets and big trucks. So the list of import taxes does continue to grow.

[Scott Detrow]

Let's rewind to the beginning of the year. What are the different areas that we have seen tariffs put in place already remind us of the greatest hits?

[Scott Horsley]

Oh, gosh. It's almost everything the United States imports, including a lot of things we don't really produce in our own country, like bananas and coffee. The Yale Budget Lab has kept a running tally of all the tariffs that the Trump administration has imposed. And it counts that the average tax rate right now on imported products is close to 18%. That's compared to about 2.5% at the beginning of the year before Trump went back to the White House. So this is the highest average tariff rate we've seen since the 1930s. And as you say, the President just keeps rolling out new import taxes.

[Scott Detrow]

1930S, not exactly a great decade when it comes to economics. Experts warned that these tariffs would shock the markets, that the world ran on free trade, and this would just gum everything up. And yet we are seeing at this point in time, the stock market's surging. What do we know about the broader impact of these tariffs?

[Scott Horsley]

Yeah, the stock market's gain has been a turnaround because when the President first started imposing these double digit tariffs, investors were nervous and we saw big drops in the market. In fact, the White House backed off some of its tariffs in response to those stock market drops. But more recently, Wall street seems to have made its peace with the tariffs, at least for the time being. Taxing Imports has put some upward pressure on inflation. Lumber tariffs, for example, are not going to help bring down the cost of housing. And adding a 50% tax on coffee from Brazil doesn't make your breakfast any cheaper. But investors seem to be saying that limited price increase is manageable. Some sectors of the economy are being hit harder than others, though. Manufacturing in particular has taken a beating. We just got a monthly report on the factory sector this morning from the Institute for Supply Management, and once again, they are saying tariffs are playing havoc with their businesses. It's odd because, you know, domestic factories are supposed to be the beneficiaries of the president's trade policies. Instead, they've really been struggling. Farmers have also been hurting. China has not bought any soybeans from US Soybean farmers this year, and so grain prices are really depressed. Trump has actually talked about using some of the revenue that tariffs are bringing in to provide a lifeline for farmers, as he did the first time he was in the White House. Farmers would take that. But most of the farmers I talk to say they would rather have markets and trade rather than foreign boycotts and aid.

[Scott Detrow]

And that gets to another thing. I was wondering, you've done a lot of these stories. I've done some stories as well looking at individual businesses trying to make long term decisions, trying to plan months and years down the line. I went to a distillery in Virginia and they're saying we don't know when to order glass bottles, we don't know where to order it from, because week to week the tariffs we're dealing with could be different. What have you seen big picture about how that paralysis in individual businesses is affecting consumers?

[Scott Horsley]

Well, as you say, it's just really hard to plan a business when you don't know what your costs are going to be a week from now, let alone six months from now. And if the president can impose a 50% tax via social media post, that's really worrisome. I've talked to importers who say they are just flying blind. They have to place orders with factories in Asia now, not knowing what the tariff rate is going to be next spring when the goods arrive at a port here in the United States. I've talked to importers who have thought about maybe shifting operations out of China, for example, to some other country, only to have goods from those countries now being taxed at even higher rates than Chinese products are. You have companies that have said they'd like to set up shop here in the United States, but they don't know what their competitive posture is going to be because the the tariff target keeps changing. And then you've got companies like Nvidia that are told they won't be allowed to sell their advanced computer chips to China unless they give the federal government a share of the proceeds. You know, it's just a very unpredictable environment. And usually we say that when things are even more unpredictable than normal, that's not good for business.

[Scott Detrow]

One other unpredictable factor here is the eventual ruling we all anticipate from the Supreme Court on all of this. What can you tell us about that? What we've seen in the courts so far.

[Scott Horsley]

Yeah. The White House has justified most of the tariffs the president has ordered this year by pointing to a 1970s law known as IPA that never actually uses the word tariff. And opponents have argued that law doesn't actually give the president the authority to impose import taxes. All the courts that have looked at the case so far have agreed with those critics. And so now it's up to the Supreme Court, which is going to hold oral arguments in just over a month's time. If the high court agrees with the lower courts, then a lot of these tariffs will just go away, and the government may even have to refund some of that $30 billion a month that it's been collecting. Now, the White House says that would be catastrophic. But, you know, remember, until January, the government was charging an average tariff of, you know, less than 2.5%, and the Republic managed to endure. Even if the Supreme Court does rule against the president and these IIPA tariffs, it doesn't mean there'd be no tariffs. The president still has authority to issue tariffs under other stat. It would take away sort of his most wild of wild cards.

[Scott Detrow]

I wanted to ask about two other big economic factors that are swirling around here. One is something we've talked a lot about. It's been one of the prevailing storylines in this Trump administration, and that is his big immigration crackdown. You have even had the president express some worries about how this is affecting the labor market. What are you seeing?

[Scott Horsley]

Yeah, it's changed things in a big way. The number of people coming into the country has dropped sharply. We while the number of people leaving the country either voluntarily or because they're being deported has gone up. And in fact, forecasters at the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute say there's a possibility that we will have a net outflow of immigrants this year for the first time in more than six decades. And that has enormous consequences for the job market and for the economy overall. For example, we have seen in recent months, a big slowdown in the number of jobs that employers are adding. What we don't know is how much of that is because businesses don't want to hire as many people because they're not selling as many goods or services, or how much is because they're not finding as many would be workers. It's probably some combination of that. And, of course, immigrants don't just provide labor for the economy. They also shop and spend and pay taxes. So if there are a lot fewer immigrants, that has other economic consequences as well. It would be nice to have a really clear picture of what's happening both with the job market and with the workforce. Unfortunately, a key report that would have come out on Friday with lots of useful information about exactly those things has now been postponed as a result of the government shutdown. So we're going to have to wait a little bit longer to know what's going on with the labor market.

[Scott Detrow]

And, of course, that's one other economic factor here. You have, you know, scores of federal employees who won't be receiving paychecks. President Trump is threatening to fire many federal employees. Any sense, since we have the luxury of having been through many shutdowns at this point, any sense how a government shutdown affects or complicates an economic situation?

[Scott Horsley]

Well, historically, government shutdowns have not had enormous macroeconomic effects. You know, they're a disruption. They cause some temporary displacement, but ultimately the federal workers get back pay. So the macroeconomic effects tend to be pretty limited. That could certainly change if the Trump administration were to follow through on plans to impose mass layoffs and really remake the federal workforce. We've already seen hundreds of thousands of federal workers cut so far under this administration. If we add to that, the impact could be more. But the economic data is another factor here. The government produces all sorts of economic indicators on the job market, on inflation, on gdp. Those are all compiled by government workers, and they're not being compiled during this government shutdown. And so we're at this moment where we're at a really sensitive time for the economy. The job market appears to be slowing down. Inflation's picking up. Policymakers at the Federal Reserve, for example, are trying to figure out how to navigate through these choppy water. And now some of their key navigational instruments have been covered up with black electrical tape. That's marked government shutdown. So, you know, they're flying blind. A lot of businesses are flying blind, to be sure. There are other sources of economic data. There are private sources there. You know, there are various other places you can go, but nobody has the reach of the Labor Department and the Commerce Department that go out there and survey tens of thousands of businesses and households every month and put all that information together. For us, it's a real public good and we're going to have to do without it as long as this shutdown.

[Scott Detrow]

Lasts, that is Scott Horsley, NPR's chief economic correspondent. Scott, thanks so much.

[Scott Horsley]

Good to be with you.

[Scott Detrow]

We want to take a moment here at the end of the show to note something important today. October 1st is the first day in more than 50 years that public media operated without federal funding. And the reason that we are still here today is because of you. We have heard from a lot of listeners who were worried or confused that their favorite NPR podcasts and programs would go away after Congress rescinded funds for public broadcasting this summer. And while it is true that public media is now in the midst of an immense challenge to reinvent how it operates, NPR is committed to that process. As long as you keep listening, we are not going anywhere. So thank you for, first of all, doing that, for listening, and thank you for your broader support. This episode was produced by Erica Ryan, Catherine Fink and Lauren Hodges. It was edited by Adam Raney and Rafael Nahm. Our executive producer is Sami Yenigun. It's Consider this from npr. I'm Scott Detrow.

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