U.S. President Donald Trump attends an event to honor "Angel Families" who have lost family members to crimes committed by people in the country illegally, at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 23, 2026. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
President Donald Trump’s tariffs are wrecking America’s economy, a conservative wrote on Sunday — and it is doing so in the way he said they would help.
“Trump’s trade wars have jeopardized the jobs of the hundreds of Americans whom Weyco actually does employ, in those twenty-first-century jobs that the United States excels at creating,” The Bulwark’s Catherine Rampell wrote, referring to the footwear company that distributes Trump’s favorite Florsheim shoes. Last week Rampell interviewed the CEO of Florsheim, who broke down how his company has suffered due to Trump’s tariffs. After breaking down how tariffs on Weyco shoes “reached as high as 161 percent. Which adds up,” Rampell explained how Thomas Florsheim decided he had “had enough” when his company was hit by a surprise tariff bill of over $1 million last December, prompting his company to sue the Trump administration.
Now that Trump has been ordered by the courts to reimburse companies that were forced to pay illegal tariffs, Rampell analyzed the fallout — which has been quite messy.
“Most companies I’ve spoken with in recent weeks have indeed decided to claim what’s theirs,” Rampell wrote. “In part, they’re hoping for safety in numbers: More than 300,000 importers of record are eligible for refunds. Surely, they reason, Trump’s Customs and Border Protection agency can’t audit all of them.”
She added, “Plus, for some firms, filing for a refund felt like something of a civic victory—the triumph of the rule of law over an imperialistic president who had been arbitrarily swiping money from companies and consumers.” As one midsized fashion brand CEO confidentially told Rampell, “I would like [the] rule of law to win the day. Capitalism exists by the permission and structure of democracy. But there’s a reason I’m not speaking out publicly. Like, my board of directors would have a heart attack if I was speaking out publicly about it.”
By contrast, the Balkan plum brandy importer Stephen Chamberlin is applying for the refunds because he risks going out of business if he does not.
“The tariff threw us way into the red last year,” Chamberlin told Rampell. “Never even occurred to me not to apply. That $19,000 is just too important to us.”
Yet even though some of the companies illegally tariffed by Trump will get compensated, this does not mean the negative ramifications of Trump’s tariffs will dissipate too.
“The ongoing trade uncertainty—plus Iran war–related cost spikes, and various erratic market interventions from this president—suggest that the tariff refunds trickling out may be less of an economic tailwind than once seemed possible,” Rampell wrote. “Multiple companies told me they’re not planning to use their tariff rebates to expand or hire because they needed it to patch holes in their balance sheet. Or they planned to sock the funds away just in case their tariff rates surged again.”
She continued, “Ironically, this lack of clarity about the tariff landscape may also be discouraging firms from reshoring manufacturing—Trump’s stated goal—because they too don’t know what their costs will be.”
Other conservatives have also blasted Trump’s tariffs for their economic impact. Writing for The Wall Street Journal last month, former Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas) and Donald J. Boudreaux, a professor of economics at George Mason University argued that “if the economy was 'dead' in 2024, there's no evidence Mr. Trump's tariffs have brought it back to life,” adding that when he announced his tariffs “most economists predicted that the economy's performance would be negatively affected. Thus far data overwhelmingly indicate that is what has happened."
Additionally, they shared Rampell’s analysis that the tariffs have in no way helped revitalize manufacturing in the United States.
"The world isn't deglobalizing,” Gramm and Boudreaux explained. “It's reglobalizing around partners who commit to rules rather than those who wield tariffs like a club." To prove this, they cite how "in 2025 the pace of losing manufacturing jobs accelerated to 1.2%, faster than the decline in 2024 of 0.7%. In 2017 manufacturing jobs actually increased by 0.7%."
Mona Charen, another pundit for The Bulwark, warned in February that Trump’s tariffs may even contribute to Republican losses in the 2026 midterm elections.
“Voters are rarely able to connect policy to outcomes, but they have done so in the case of tariffs,” Charen wrote. “Back in 2024, Americans were about equally divided on the question of trade, with some favoring higher tariffs and roughly similar numbers opting for lower tariffs. Experience has changed their views.”