Stephen Moore helped build the economic case for Donald Trump. Now, he’s tearing a piece of it down. In an interview with Fortune, the former presidential economic advisor and economist who literally wrote the book on Trumponomics said Trump’s tariffs have hurt GDP and pushed prices higher: “Tariffs are taxes—and taxes are bad.”
Moore, a Heritage Foundation economist, explained that import taxes have directly increased costs for U.S. businesses and consumers by “clobbering” medium-size manufacturers. He noted an article in the Wall Street Journal that said coffee is the commodity with the single fastest growth in prices right now.
“Well, guess what? We put a 50% tariff on coffee,” Moore said. “So, yeah, the coffee price went up.”
