Tax Foundation prices Trump's tariffs at 0.4% of long-run GDP

Divide the projected job loss by the projected output loss and the Tax Foundation's two headline figures turn out to be one: about 862,500 full-time jobs per percentage point of long-run GDP, or roughly 86,000 per tenth ^[14]. Quote the 0.4% and the 345,000 as separate evidence of the same policy's cost and you are quoting one estimate twice ^[2][3].

Both are projections of a long-run level, in Fortune's account of the Tax Foundation's work ^[2][3]. Levels persist until something removes them. The 3.1% already sitting in core goods prices ^[1] stops contributing to year-over-year inflation twelve months after the last increase, and it leaves the price level only if the tariffs leave ^[17].

The 1809 record is the part of the historical parallel that comes with dates. Congress scrapped Jefferson's embargo a few days before Madison took office in March 1809 ^[7]. Madison replaced it with the Non-Intercourse Act, which kept the prohibition on trade with Britain and France while lifting the embargo on everyone else ^[8]. A few months later he allowed American ships to call at British and French ports while keeping US ports closed to theirs ^[9]. Fortune writes that none of it changed British or French behaviour ^[9]. The war started three years after the repeal ^[15].

Fortune's own comparison puts the embargo well ahead of the tariffs as a self-inflicted blow ^[19]. Exports fell roughly 80% and imports nearly 60% within a year, and the country was in depression before a shot was fired at Britain ^[6]. The tariffs, in the same telling, were erected to punish rivals and ignite domestic manufacturing, and did grievous harm instead ^[13].

For the current war Fortune attaches no output or employment number. Hormuz is closed, the International Energy Agency calls it the largest oil-supply disruption in history, and energy markets have been on edge throughout ^[5]. The column says only that the administration is no closer to its goals in month seven ^[4].

I'd treat the tariff drag as a permanent subtraction from output and the Hormuz premium as the part that moves. Two things would break that. If the tariffs come off, the 0.4% never arrives and the 3.1% washes out of the annual comparison inside a year ^[2][1][17]. And the 345,000 is a modelled number rather than a count, so it will not appear in a payroll release as its own line ^[3]. The exit Fortune points to is political, battlefield successes and a treaty that reinstated the status quo ante ^[11].

Timing is the weakest part of the analogy, and it is not reassuring. The current war is in its seventh month ^[4]. In the earlier one, the damage from the Royal Navy blockade accumulated in 1813-14, the second and third years of the fighting ^[10][18].