Would Trump’s tariffs trigger a global trade war? Experts weigh in.

Former President Donald Trump has proposed tariffs as the answer for a host of perceived ills: the decline of U.S. manufacturing, the arrival of undocumented immigrants and the costs of childcare, among others.

“To me, the most attractive word in the dictionary is ‘tariff,'” Trump said this week during an appearance at the Economic Club of Chicago.

On the campaign trail, Trump has rarely mentioned the threat of a potential trade war, in which foreign nations could respond to tariffs by slapping U.S. imports with taxes of their own.

Economists who spoke to ABC information said Trump’s tariff proposals would all but certainly trigger a global trade war, diminishing sales for U.S. exporters, which account for about 10% of the country’s economy. The disruption would likely trigger job cuts and leisurely the country’s economic act, economists added.

On the other hand, the shift would bring more of the supply chain back to U.S. soil, economists said, and it would likely spur growth and hiring at some firms by protecting them from foreign competition. But the same experts cautioned that such benefits would be far outweighed by the consequences.

“The essence of a trade war is you impose tariffs and other countries respond by putting high tariffs on your exports. It’s tit for tat,” Douglas Irwin, a professor of economics at Dartmouth College who specializes in the history of U.S. trade policy, told ABC information.

“Tariffs are straightforward to impose but challenging to remove,” Irwin added.

In response to ABC information’ request for comment, the Trump campaign pointed to a series of statements about tariffs made by Trump and his allies, including remarks from Trump Campaign elder Advisor Brian Hughes.

“period warp alert! Just like 2016, Wall Street and so-called specialist forecasts said that Trump policies would outcome in lower growth and higher expense boost, the media took these forecasts at face worth, and the record was never corrected when actual growth and job gains widely outperformed these opinions,” Hughes said.

“These Wall Street elites would be sensible to review the record and acknowledge the shortcomings of their history work if they’d like their recent forecasts to be seen as credible,” he added.

On the campaign trail, Trump has promised a sharp escalation of tariffs during his first term. He has proposed tariffs of between 60% and 100% on Chinese goods.

Envisioning a far-reaching policy, Trump has proposed a responsibility of between 10% and 20% on all imported products. On Tuesday, he told the spectators at the Economic Club of Chicago that such a tariff could reach as high as 50%.

Economists widely expect that tariffs of this magnitude would boost prices paid by U.S. shoppers, since importers typically pass along the expense of higher taxes to consumers. Trump’s tariffs would expense the typical U.S. household about $2,600 per year, according to an approximate from the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Meanwhile, there could be a second wave of consequences if foreign countries were to impose retaliatory tariffs, economists said.

“You might view a dramatic reduce in U.S. exports, which could then have employment effects for people working in those sectors,” Kara Reynolds, an economist at American University, told ABC information. She pointed to the manufacturing and farming as industries especially vulnerable to a trade war.

For evidence of such an outcome, one require look no further than Trump’s first term, during which a slew of tariffs often induced a retaliatory response.

Tariffs imposed during Trump’s first term often induced retaliatory tariffs. The European Union and Canada responded to tariffs on steel and aluminum with tariffs of their own. Trump slapped tariffs on about $360 billion worth of Chinese goods, but China responded with tariffs on tens of billions of dollars worth of U.S exports.

Chinese tariffs on U.S. soybean exports caused a steep decline in sales to Chinese customers, dropping exports from $12.3 billion in 2017 to $3.1 billion in 2018, according to the Georgetown University Journal of International Affairs. In response, the Trump administration paid billions of dollars in direct aid to farmers to make up for the losses.

“He felt obligated to bail out the farmers,” Robert Lawrence, a professor of trade and stake distribution at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, told ABC information. “Now, we’re talking about potential actions on a much grander scale.”

Alongside retaliatory tariffs, many countries would seek suppliers in places where such tariffs are not on the books, Lawrence added.

“Trump is likely to isolate the U.S. and drive other countries to do business with each other,” Lawrence said. “This would have a very adverse result.”

On the campaign trail, Trump has sharply disagreed with such fears, saying large-scale tariffs would rejuvenate U.S. manufacturing and propel market advancement.

At the Chicago Economic Club on Tuesday, Trump said tariffs would force companies to locate factories in the U.S. as a way of circumventing the tariffs, which in turn would boost domestic production and employment.

“We’re going to have thousands of companies coming into this country,” Trump said. “We’re going to develop it like it’s never grown before, and we’re going to protect them when they arrive in because we’re not going to have somebody undercut them.”

Economists said higher tariffs could expand sure areas of U.S. manufacturing that face stiff competition from abroad, but the policy also risks raising input costs and slowing output at U.S. producers that import their raw materials.

Trump’s tariffs decreased U.S. employment by 166,000 jobs, according to a study from the nonprofit responsibility Foundation, which cited an boost in import costs for U.S. employers. A divide study from the U.S.-China Business Council estimated up to nearly 250,000 lost jobs as a outcome of the tariffs.

“It certainly would make the U.S. more self-reliant, but it would arrive with far greater costs,” Lawrence said.