On Wednesday, Breitbart posted an article about the impact of tariffs on the economy. The numbers are quite different from the information given by the majority of the talking heads in the mainstream media.

The article reports:

Tariffs can boost U.S. economic growth over the long term even when foreigners absorb just a tiny fraction of their cost, according to the Federal Reserve’s main economic model.

The Federal Reserve Board’s large-scale model, known as FRB/US, indicates that a broad 10 percent tariff on non-oil goods can leave real GDP about 0.28 percent higher after ten years if foreign producers absorb just over one percent of the total tariff bill. Business investment also ends up higher.

That is a striking result given the mainstream economics profession’s animosity toward tariffs. Economists at the Fed have devoted enormous attention to the costs of tariffs. Yet they’ve done almost no work exploring the fact that the Fed Board’s model shows tariffs adding to growth.

The article concludes:

Since capital goods account for 29 percent of the tariff bill in Furman’s calculations, the foreign contribution amounts to just 1.16 percent of the total. So in our adjustment, Americans still bear nearly 99 percent of the initial bill. That’s almost certainly too high; but for the purposes of exploring the Fed’s model, we wanted to minimize the size of the foreign contribution.

With that small concession, ten-year GDP rises 0.282 percent above baseline, and investment moves slightly into positive territory at 0.016 percent above baseline. The important investment result is the reversal of a projected decline exceeding three percent.

The gains persist. After 30 years, GDP is about 0.21 percent higher and investment roughly 0.42 percent higher.

Our simulations almost certainly underestimate the contributions of tariffs to growth. They do not include any additional investment surge from foreign or American companies building American factories. There’s no wave of reshoring in our model or expanded export opportunities won through trade negotiations. The gains emerge from the model’s existing economic relationships.

Allow the Fed’s model to recognize the investment incentives arising from higher domestic selling prices, and the projected damage largely disappears. Add a tiny foreign contribution, and both investment and output are higher.

In short, the Fed’s main economic model shows that tariffs raise American output and investment. Isn’t it weird how they never told us about that?

Please follow the link to read the entire article. Until 1913, America was funded by tariffs–there was no personal income tax. When the income tax was introduced, Americans were told it would only impact the top 1 percent of the population. We see how that went.