Corporate media repeatedly predicted that President Donald Trumpâs tariffs would lead to price hikes âonly for those forecasts to be repeatedly proven wrong.
Trump imposed steep reciprocal tariffs on numerous countries on April 2 before announcing a 90-day pause that lowered most of them to a 10% baseline. Despite the 10% duties and persistent media warnings, inflation has not surged.
For instance, ABC News on March 26 cited âexpertsâ to report that fresh tariffs âwould ratchet up the global trade war, raising prices for an array of consumer goods and risking an economic slowdown.â While a May 13 CNBC piece acknowledged that inflation had âeasedâ in April despite the tariffs, it warned prices could rise as the duties took hold.
However, inflation also rose less than expected in May, falling to a four-year low.
Moreover, The Guardian, while not a corporate media outlet, ran an April 22 opinion piece asserting that tariffs would inevitably increase prices.
âhere is no way tariffs of this magnitude can be absorbed,â the authors wrote. âProducers and consumers must take a hit, and that means rising prices.â
NewsNation host Chris Cuomo similarly claimed on âThe Chris Cuomo Projectâ in February that tariffs were bound to influence inflation.
âhe idea that itâs going to boost our economy â never happens, okay? The idea that you can tariff your way and not have an income tax anymore â not going to happen,â Cuomo said. âThe idea that youâre going to apply a tariff and it doesnât affect inflation â not true.â
In a June 20 piece, CNN acknowledged that tariff inflation warnings have yet to prove accurate.
âPredictions from mainstream economists were dire after President Donald Trump launched his tariff campaign just a couple weeks after he began his second term in office: Prices would rise â sharply â they said, reigniting an inflation crisis that tens of millions of Americans had elected him to solve,â the piece states. âBut that massive, tariff-induced inflation spike hasnât materialized. Not even close.â
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent argued on âPod Force Oneâ June 18 that those predicting doom due to Trumpâs duties have âtariff derangement syndrome.â
âI think that a lot of Democrats are in favor of tariffs, but now that President Trump is leading the charge, they canât be,â Bessent said. âAnd so they call them the Trump tariffs. And all these predictions have just been baseless and a flop â and nobody wants to admit it.â
He noted that the consumer price index (CPI) â a broad measure of the prices of everyday goods â only rose by a seasonally adjusted 0.1% in May, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) published on June 11. He added that the Producer Price Index rose by the same rate in May, according to the BLS.
Furthermore, the U.S. economy added 147,000 nonfarm payroll jobs in June, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data published on Thursday. The total exceeded economistsâ projections that the U.S. economy added 106,000 jobs in June.
ABC News, CNBC and Cuomo did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundationâs request for comment.
The Guardian declined to comment to the DCNF.
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