Gita Gopinath calls Trump’s tariffs a ‘negative scorecard’ for US economy

Harvard Economics Professor and former IMF Chief Economist Gita Gopinath has gave a harsh assessment of US President Donald Trump’s tariff policies, calling them a “negative scorecard” for the American economy.

Trump had imposed tariffs as high as 50% on countries such as India and Brazil, and an unprecedented 100% tariff on imports of branded and patented pharmaceutical drugs. The move was aimed at boosting US manufacturing and improving the trade balance.

Six months after these tariffs were put in place, Gopinath evaluated their impact and found that they had yielded little benefit.

In a post on X (formerly Twitter), she wrote: “It is six months since the ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs. What have US tariffs accomplished?

1. Raise revenue for government? Yes. Quite substantially. Borne almost entirely by US firms and passed on some to US consumers. So it has worked like a tax on US firms/consumers.

2. Raise inflation? Yes, by small amounts overall. More substantially for household appliances, furniture, coffee.

3. Improve trade balance? No sign yet of that.

4. Improve US manufacturing? No sign yet of that.

Overall, the scorecard is negative.”

Her remarks come amid growing criticism of Trump’s aggressive tariff strategy. On October 4, JNU Professor and China studies expert Srikanth Kondapalli told ANI that Trump’s decision to target Indian goods was likely driven by “egoistic reasons.”

Kondapalli said that if Trump’s anger was over trade surpluses, it should have been directed at China rather than India, adding that India was merely a sideshow in the matter and was likely targeted for personal or egoistic reasons related to the Nobel Prize or the ceasefire, which placed them in a very strange situation.

Bhaskar Chakravorti, Dean of Global Business at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, also weighed in on the matter. He said that Trump’s move to impose 100% tariffs on pharmaceuticals would not immediately affect India, but warned that similar measures could come later.

He said that while the move to impose tariffs on patented pharmaceuticals would not directly impact Indian manufacturers significantly, it was coming dangerously close, and he would not rule out the possibility of tariffs being extended to generic pharmaceuticals in the future.