So, how are those tariffs going?

A detailed look at how American and world trade has gone in 2025 concludes that: "The global economy has been transformed by shape-shifting US trade policies. Just not in the ways Mr. Trump envisioned."

As a global average, US tariffs are about 11.6%, but there are huge variation between countries, with China facing down average tariffs of 27% (although much better than the triple digit tariffs in place last spring), and Canada and Mexico facing tariffs of just 4.5-5% due to the protections of the USMCA trade agreement (for now, at least). Other countries, though, are not relatiating in kind, generally speaking, and even further opening up non-US trade. The global effective tariff rate has remained pretty much unchanged at around 2%.

Most countries are just trying, as far as possible, to avoid US trade and boost trade with other non-US countries, particularly China, India, Vietnam, etc. Canada's exports to the US fell by 5.8% in 2025; it's exports to the rest of the world jumped by 17.2%  although a lot of that was specifically due to the burgeoning price of gold which was always a large export globally.

The US has indeed narrowed its trading gap with many countries, especially China, a stated aim of Trump. But its trade deficits with other countries, such as Mexico, Vietnam, Taiwan, Thailand and Ireland, have worsened.

Of the three countries facing so-called "fentanyl tariffs" - China, Mexico and Canada - China had been by far the hardest hit, but Mexico (probably the main offender as regards fentanyl) has hardly suffered at all. Canada is somewhere in between.

US inflation has actually not increased by as much as many commentators predicted (that could well change).

Canada has lost a lot of manufacturing jobs as a result of the US tariffs, but the USA has lost almost as many, percentagewise, and many more in absolute terms. The US employment slide actually predated Trump and the tariffs, although tariffs have certainly not helped (and have definitely not had the effect that Trump boasted about, of vastly improving US manufacturing employment).

Part of Trump's goal, certainly when negotiating international trade deals, was to increase overseas investment in the USA. Canada never actually signed any agreements with the US, and so has made no commitments tp increase US investment like several other countries have. In fact, Canadian net investment in the US has cratered, falling to a 12-year low.

Another victory Trump claims for his tariffs is the sterling performance of the stocke exchanges. What he fails to mention is that the performance of the exchanges in the rest of the world has far outpaced that of the US stock exchange, a stark reversal of the trends over the previous decade.

And finally, and no means least, Americans' opinions of US economic policy (inflation and employment) is also tanking. Americans have rarely ever felt so pessimistic in the last five decades. It remains to be seen how that pessimism plays it in the upcoming.mid-trm elections.