Robert Rubin

Maybe and maybe not, the tariffs could create a set of inflationary expectations and it could lead to inflation.

But whether it does or it doesn't, it almost surely will adversely affect growth.

But I, for one, never thought it was going to have an immediate impact.

But I thought the risk was over time.

And I still think that's the risk.

And if you speak to CEOs in our firm, we do a lot of that.

We have an immense business dealing with basically large corporate America.

I think most CEOs, virtually all CEOs, think they're going to be passing on a lot of this in terms of prices.

So cost to consumers will go up and cost to producers who are importing

and the components will be going up.

The Yale Budget Lab, which is terrifically reliable and sensible about fiscal matters, I asked her the other day, the one who runs it, Tasha Saron, who's a professor at Yale and terrific, also a PhD in economics.

She told me that she thinks that revenues will be about

maybe 280 billion a year or some number like that.

And that's before the adverse effects on growth and retaliation.

You take it all into account, maybe 200.

It's a very small fraction of our deficits.

This is not going to be a fiscal response.

And you're paying a price for it in terms of, as I said a moment ago, risk to growth and at least I think the possible, certainly higher cost to consumers and to producers and possibly triggering inflationary expectations.

What is a tariff?

Assuming that it gets passed on, which if you talk to our clients, I think virtually all this is going to get passed on over time.