‘If he’d stayed on the golf course, we’d be in a better place’: experts on Trump’s tariffs, one year on

Last April, the president unleashed a tidal wave of tariffs on ‘liberation day’. Analysts say the policy has failed, even by the Trump administration’s own terms

Before Donald Trump declared “liberation day” on 2 April 2025 and shocked the world by raising import tariffs on nearly every country the US did business with, he had spent almost three months causing chaos in Washington.

The wholesale slashing of government jobs under Doge (the “department of government efficiency”) and the defunding of US aid agencies had shown White House watchers that the US president was in a hurry to upset institutions he considered profligate or useless.