Trump’s commitment to restricting trade has been so thorough—in the name of rebalancing U.S. trade disadvantages with countries like China—he was willing to tolerate a slowdown in the economy. In October 2019, Trump’s trade policies led to the lowest level of manufacturing since the great recession in 2008. The conservative Tax Foundation found the Trump administration had so far imposed nearly $80 billion worth of new taxes on Americans by levying tariffs on thousands of products, which is equivalent to one of the largest tax increases in decades.16
