In conversation with President Trump

Multiple authoritative sources show that Donald Trump won the 2024 U.S. presidential election and was elected to a second (non-consecutive) term. The certified results list Trump as receiving 312 electoral votes to Democrat Kamala Harris’s 226, as well as winning the national popular vote plurality.(en.wikipedia.org) Overviews of the election and of Harris’s campaign likewise state that Harris lost to Trump on November 5, 2024.(en.wikipedia.org) Since Trump was subsequently inaugurated again on January 20, 2025,(en.wikipedia.org) Friedberg’s June 2024 prediction that Trump was likely "going to win a second term" was borne out by events.

Trump did win the 2024 election and returned to office on January 20, 2025, satisfying the prediction’s “if reelected” condition. (en.wikipedia.org) During the 2024 campaign he repeatedly floated a 10–20% universal tariff on all imports and 60% or higher tariffs on Chinese goods, a clearly broad and aggressive tariff agenda. (cnbc.com) Once in office, he implemented that agenda in substance: beginning April 5, 2025, the U.S. started collecting a sweeping 10% tariff on virtually all imports, with significantly higher, country‑specific rates (up to about 50% on some goods and roughly 54% total on Chinese imports), explicitly framed as a new global trade system. (reuters.com) The administration has since insisted that the 10% baseline tariff will remain in place as a core feature of U.S. trade policy, reinforcing that these are not symbolic or short‑lived measures. (nypost.com) Because Trump did in fact implement a far‑reaching, aggressive tariff regime similar in scale and spirit to what he campaigned on, Jason’s prediction that he was merely pandering and would “not implement the tariff thing anyway” is wrong.

Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign trade platform centered on broad, across‑the‑board tariffs — notably a 10% (or higher) universal tariff on all imports and around 60% on Chinese goods. FactCheck.org and other analyses describe these as economy‑wide proposals, not narrow sectoral measures.(factcheck.org)

In office during his second term, Trump has substantially implemented that broad vision:

• In April 2025 he invoked emergency powers (IEEPA) to impose a 10% baseline tariff on almost all U.S. imports, plus higher “reciprocal” tariffs for dozens of countries. Reuters describes this as a “sweeping overhaul” of the global trading system, not a narrow, sector‑limited policy.(reuters.com)
• Reporting and tax advisories summarize the new regime as a 10% across‑the‑board baseline with elevated country‑specific rates (e.g., 20–46% on major partners, and much higher on China).(grantthornton.com)
• For China specifically, tariffs were pushed far beyond the original 60% idea: combined measures briefly raised effective rates to about 145% on Chinese imports before being partially reduced in the context of negotiations, still leaving very elevated duties in place.(en.wikipedia.org)

There was a temporary 90‑day pause on many of the new above‑10% “reciprocal” tariffs after a market crash, but the 10% universal tariff remained in effect, sector‑specific duties on items like autos, steel and aluminum continued, and many country‑specific hikes were later implemented anyway. Estimates put the average applied U.S. tariff rate around 27%, the highest in more than a century — again indicating a broad, not narrowly targeted, regime.(en.wikipedia.org)

Friedberg’s prediction was that if Trump pursued this agenda, economic advisers would force a major rethink so that any actual tariff program would be toned down and confined to “particular slices of the economy” rather than implemented broadly. In reality, Trump has enacted and largely maintained a sweeping, economy‑wide tariff structure with only limited carve‑outs and tactical pauses, and in some respects (e.g., China rates) has gone well beyond the original headline numbers.

Because the broad, across‑the‑economy tariff policy has in fact been implemented and sustained, rather than significantly scaled back to narrow sectors, the prediction is wrong.