On April 2, 2025, Donald Trump walked into the White House Rose Garden and announced the most sweeping set of import tariffs in nearly a century. One year later, with the Iranian war consuming political oxygen and a Supreme Court ruling having invalidated most of those measures in February, the anniversary is arriving without the triumphant economic narrative the administration had anticipated.
The numbers are striking in both directions. The government collected $151 billion in tariff revenue in the first five months of the fiscal year, nearly four times the equivalent period before Liberation Day. But the Supreme Court’s February ruling that Trump overstepped his authority has triggered a refund process. Customs officials are working on returning approximately $166 billion to importers, meaning the net fiscal outcome from the IEEPA tariff strategy is effectively negative.
Trump signed executive orders on the anniversary day adjusting duties on pharmaceuticals and metals. The White House marked the occasion by pointing to a 24% reduction in the overall US goods trade deficit compared to the same period a year earlier. The bilateral goods deficit with China, specifically, declined by 30% in 2025.
Outside the White House, the assessment is considerably harsher. Economists at the Tax Foundation estimate the average US household faces an additional $600 tax burden in 2026 from tariffs currently in place. A study by the European Central Bank found that US importers and consumers, not foreign exporters, bore the overwhelming cost of the duties, contradicting the administration’s framing.
Manufacturing construction spending actually declined from $230.9 billion in January 2025 to $196.2 billion in January 2026, which undercuts the administration’s reshoring argument. Only 10% of surveyed US companies were actively taking action to reshore production by last September, though that figure rose to 26% by early 2026.
Global capital markets have also absorbed a structural recalibration. In sterling terms, the MSCI USA index is up just 14% since Liberation Day, meaningfully underperforming the MSCI All Country World Index’s 18% gain over the same period. The Shanghai Composite, Japan’s Nikkei 225 and South Korea’s Kospi all outperformed the S&P 500 across the 12-month window.
Daniel Casali of London-based Evelyn Partners explained the shift to CNBC. “This relative weakness in U.S. equities likely reflects the impact of President Donald Trump’s ‘America First’ policies, which have prompted Europe to ramp up defense and infrastructure spending as part of a broader fiscal stimulus,” he said.
The tariffs shifted more than 50 times since Liberation Day, through 90-day suspensions, reversals, escalations and negotiations. CFO confidence collapsed from 37% to 5% in a single month in April 2025 at the height of the uncertainty. That sentiment shock rippled through capital expenditure and hiring decisions for most of the remainder of the year.
Economists warn that the full consumer price impact of the tariffs that remain in place has not yet arrived. An estimated 12-to-18-month lag between tariff imposition and consumer price effects puts peak pressure on American households in the April-to-October 2026 window, directly inside midterm election season.