1. United States
2. Alaska
3. Letter

Trumps tariffs will be disastrous. The US economy was humming along and in a growth period before Trump took over. Every country in the world had high inflation during the COVID pandemic because of supply chain issues while people were buying more products instead of using services. Our economy was in strong shape recovering from pandemic. Inflation levels were recovering and were at normal levels and incomes were rising to keep up with it. Our inflation levels were declining faster then in other industrialized nations and we were in much better shape then other nations. There were things like eggs that were affected by the bird flu but overall things were improving and stocks were doing well. Isolationism is a disastrous policy that will ruin an economy that is doing well. We live in a global world and countries do better when they trade with each other. The tariffs will cause a recession by design. Economists are sounding the alarm bells. Prices are going to rise with the tariffs and we now have a 40 percent chance of a recession in 2025. Tariffs kept the US from growing before WWII and did not help us out of the Great Depression. Despite promises tariffs are unlikely to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US. As history has shown tariffs do not revive industries that are already gone. They will however raise prices for the things Americans need. The massive cuts to services, the huge loss of jobs, business deregulation and tax cuts for the wealthiest corporations and individuals will only exacerbate the problem with extreme wealth gaps. Extreme wealth disparity is what caused the Great Depression.