It seems the whole world and the entire media are hyperventilating over Trump tariffs and their inflationary impact. We even continue to hear The New York Times and many economists like Mark Zandi of Moody’s make the contradictory case that Trump’s tariffs are inflationary and so are his tax cuts. Hello!! Tax cuts and tax increases can’t both cause inflation.

Inflation is too many dollars chasing too few goods, so anything that increases money puts pressure on consumer prices and anything that increases the supply of goods produced, reduces inflationary pressures. More eggs means lower egg prices. Hard stop. This isn’t that complicated.

So we thought we would review the Trump agenda and assess the impact of these policies on prices:

Admittedly, some of these Trump policies will have a small impact on prices and others (tariffs) a major impact. So it’s hard to weigh the overall impact on prices. Our best guess is that if Trump tariffs are offset by dollar-for-dollar reductions in income taxes (as he says he will do), the overall effect on prices will be close to neutral, and the overall economic impact mostly positive.