FortuneCatherina Gioino
Wilbur Ross was Trump’s first-term tariff hawk. Now he says refunds give importers ‘an extra profit’ and pay them ‘more than the money’ they laid out
When Wilbur Ross ran the Commerce Department in President Donald Trump’s first term, tariffs had one job: shrink the trade deficit.
“It’s a whole different picture,” Ross toldFortune. “He made the decision not just to use the tariffs for purposes of changing the trade deficit. He used them for a variety of other purposes.
So it’s a whole different conceptual approach.”
He called Trump’s second term one filled with “a different objective that he has.”
Because importers pay tariffs at the border, they decide whether to absorb the cost or pass it on. In practice, most of it reaches shoppers: Federal Reserve datashow American households paidabout 90% of the cost of Trump’s second-term tariffs.
Back during Trump’s first term,…
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