Richard Clarida

Yeah, yeah.

Again, I have not worked through it, but certainly a must-read for me.

So I'll wait until I finish it before I weigh in on that.

So let me reinforce what you said.

Eventually, when we get the data for 2025, it may show GDP growth the same as it was in 2024, maybe down to 10th.

It will likely show inflation unchanged from 2024.

And so a future historian may well say what you just said, Paul, which is what was the big deal?

GDP growth didn't move.

Inflation didn't move.

I think a couple of things.

One is that the ultimate tariffs put in place were a lot lower than the Liberation Day levels.

And as Besson has emphasized, that was part of the negotiating strategy.

Secondly, there's a saying in baseball, sometimes you'd rather be lucky than good.

I think the other thing that happened is whatever headwind there might've been from tariffs counterfactually was offset by the buoyant CapEx spending, especially by the tech companies.

And the fact that the stock market is very optimistic on this story.

So that generates a wealth effect and an investment effect.

And then thirdly, US companies

uh absorbed more of the tariff hit in somewhat reduced margins and you know in the aggregate they did have that room profit margins have been very healthy and and they didn't pass it through the to the consumer and again of course we have the iepa decision the supreme court is about to uh release and that may further uh lead to lower adjust

Put it this way, I think if you calculate the tariff revenue we're collecting divided by imports, it's coming in at about 10%.

And Liberation Day was like 35%.