Risk of rising US prices could be biggest brake on Donald Trump’s tariff plan

Taken at face value Donald Trump’s embrace of reciprocal tariffs is a declaration of total trade war, that would amount to perhaps the single biggest peacetime shock to global commerce. In promising to levy import taxes on any nation that imposes tariffs or VAT on US exports, he is following through on a campaign promise to address a near trillion dollar trade deficit – the difference between the value of America’s exports and its imports – that he believes amounts to a tax on American jobs. In response, he wants to deploy tariffs as an “external revenue service”, simultaneously easing…