Trump’s Tariffs Leave Economists Fixated on One Word: Stagflation

In Gravity’s Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon’s sprawling World War II epic, a rocket engineer testing his latest design stands at the exact point it would land if everything worked perfectly. His reasoning: The complexities and uncertainties in the new technology are so great that a bull’s-eye is the least likely outcome.

Economists attempting to forecast the impact of President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs might arrive at a similar conclusion. There’s policy uncertainty—who knows if tariffs will be kept in place or negotiated away? Economic uncertainty—who knows whether producers or consumers will bear a larger share of the cost? And modeling uncertainty—who can estimate the impact of massive tariffs when there’s no recent experience as a guide?