This video breaks down what I call “the $80 billion mistake” — how the Trump-era tariffs acted as a hidden, regressive tax on American families and businesses, and quietly drained around $80 billion a year out of the US economy.

Using an investor’s lens, the argument is simple: tariffs weren’t “foreign money flowing in,” they were a self-imposed operating cost. Importers paid the tariffs, passed them to manufacturers, who passed them to consumers. The result was higher prices on everyday goods, thinner margins for small businesses, stalled investment, and a slow “secret bankruptcy” of the American household’s margin of safety.

The policy also triggered foreign retaliation, hitting farmers, manufacturers, and key export sectors, while encouraging other countries to rewire supply chains away from the US. Beyond the direct cost, the real damage was to trust and stability: capital hates chaos, and executive improvisation under an emergency law from 1977 (IEEPA) signaled that US rules could be rewritten on a whim.

In the end, this wasn’t just a bad trade policy. It was a failure of stewardship and governance—an $80 billion-a-year drag that eroded purchasing power, scared off investment, weakened alliances, and misallocated capital that could have funded real growth, innovation, and opportunity for American families.