This is Planet Money from NPR.
Today is a big day.
For weeks we have been hearing about April 2nd.
The Trump administration had promised that today would be the day that they put new tariffs on goods coming in from,
I don't know, maybe every country in the world.
This is one of the most important days, in my opinion, in American history.
It's our declaration of economic independence.
The looming tariffs had sent chills down the spines of many economists around the world.
Because tariffs, they're an old economic tool that many economists have disliked for a very long time.
They're basically in import tax, paid mostly by consumers.
And for centuries they've been used to make a country's population by its own stuff, instead of another country's stuff.
But economists generally prefer more and freer trade, because it means more competition, lower prices, economic growth.
A bedrock theory in economics is the theory of comparative advantage,
that basically countries can specialize in different things,
and through trade we can all, in the aggregate, get richer.
But surely tariffs have been useful ever, or they wouldn't exist, right?
Right?
Hello and welcome to Planet Money.
I'm Mary Childs.
And I'm Greg Rzalski.