Are Trump’s tariffs a good way to ‘help the economy’ and raise revenue?

The short answer is no, this will not help the economy. In fact, it will almost certainly hurt the economy, though it might raise some negligible amount of revenue in the short run. Let’s first look at the revenue aspect since it is simpler. Tariffs do raise revenue if the tariffs are paid. The “if” is crucial here. Tariffs are, in fact, intended not to be paid, as they are meant to incentivize switching of consumption from foreign to domestic goods. Previously more expensive domestic goods can now compete on price with cheaper foreign goods, which would lower the market share of foreign goods, hence driving down tariff revenue in the long run (despite a potential short term revenue spike as the economy adjusts). Furthermore, what little revenue the tariffs produce, would likely be used to partially fund a second Trump tax-cut, which would ultimately further increase the national debt on net. While switching to American-made goods might be heralded as a win, that too is deceiving. By making foreign firms’ goods artificially more expensive, the consumer will lose purchasing power as they either have to switch to the American good (which is more expensive than the foreign good before the tariff) or the more expensive post-tariff foreign good, meaning they can buy less goods with the same amount of income. Furthermore, by artificially boosting American firms’ market share (compared to foreign firms’), that allows them more power to mark-up prices over marginal costs, further hurting consumers. These are both factors that would boost rents for American capitalists at the expense of workers, worsening inequality. If inequality isn’t your choice metric of “helping the economy” and GDP is, then decreasing the purchasing power of consumers would decrease Real GDP as real consumption (the largest component of GDP) is reduced, unless wages rose to offset price increases (which is unlikely due to the increase in firms’ market power). Still, in that unlikely case, we’d see inflation, which would also be unwelcome. One metric where tariffs might “help” the economy is in the stock market. If you believe the stock market represents economic performance, then American firms would likely have increased share prices as a result of tariffs. However, considering most stocks are held by the top 10%, this too would further increase inequality (which I’d argue signals that it hurts the economy). All of this doesn’t even account for the larger political economy effects, as our allies would reduce trade with us and potentially seek trade integration with other large markets that don’t share the same ideologies, like China. Economic integration can lead to more lenience when adversarial leaders take actions contrary to the interests of the Liberal World Order, as seen with Europe’s dependence on Russian natural gas at the start of the Ukraine War. The expectation of Donald Trump performing a rational cost/benefit economic and political analysis on the impact of tariffs would certainly be that of fiction, but at the simplest unit of analysis, it should be obvious that the two stated goals are incompatible, and likely, both would fail to actualize.