By the time Marco Polo journeyed along the Silk Road connecting China and India to Europe in the 13th century, ancient civilizations had already been trading goods ranging from silk, tea, cinnamon and rice to honey and horses for a thousand years. Globalization, even in ancient times, opened civilizations to new products, ideas and technologies, generally improving standards of living worldwide.
President Trump’s tariff plan appears determined to turn back the clock, and nowhere does his plan defy common sense more than with those same spices that Marco Polo and countless others in the ancient world journeyed for years to bring to the world.
Take vanilla: around 80% of America’s supply of it comes from Madagascar, one of the only places it can be produced thanks to about 100 inches of rainfall per year and humid temperatures between 68 and 86 degrees. President Trump’s widely discredited formula for calculating reciprocal tariff rates, which intended to eliminate trade deficits with around 90 countries, places Madagascar’s tariff at 47%, despite the fact that it would be impossible for the island nation of 31 million with a GDP per capita of $506 per year to import more than the $733 million it exports, mostly in vanilla, clothing, titanium, cobalt and nickel, to the United States. According to the World Bank, the $83 million in vanilla alone Madagascar shipped to the U.S. in 2023 outweighed all U.S. exports to the country. Instead of bringing manufacturing back to the U.S. as Trump’s proponents intend, that tariff would likely just make prices of spices higher, or force companies to manufacture synthetic ingredients instead.
Similarly, cinnamon comes from the bark of trees that are grown in southeast Asian countries like Sri Lanka, and even if it was possible to grow the trees in the U.S., it would take eight to 10 years from planting one before it could be harvested, says Laura Shumow, executive director of the American Spice Trade Association. But because the U.S. buys $3 billion from Sri Lanka, far more than the country is able to import from the U.S., Trump slapped a 44% tariff on Sri Lanka.
“You could figure out a way in a laboratory or in a greenhouse to be able to create conditions in which you could grow a couple of vanilla plants,” says Shumow, “but that’s just not going to feed America.” According to the ASTA, there are no fewer than two dozen widely-used spices and plants, including black pepper, nutmeg, ginger and basil, that can’t be produced economically in commercial quantities in the U.S.
Shumow’s organization was one of many trade groups that went to Washington to plead their case to U.S. trade representative Jamieson Greer in the last month. The reprieve came on Wednesday afternoon, the same day the tariffs took effect, when Trump announced a lower reciprocal tariff of 10% during a 90-day pause to allow countries to negotiate different deals, though he raised the tariff on Chinese imports to 145% in retaliation against stiffer rates imposed by China.
“To have no trade deficit with any country, the most obvious way to achieve it is autarky [complete self-sufficiency], so you’d have to go back to the early medieval period,” says Carmen Reinhart, a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School and former chief economist of the World Bank. “The idea that you get to a trade deficit of zero by wiping out balances on a country by country basis is not in the realm of historical experience.”
Beyond spices and rare minerals and metals—which were exempted from the announced tariffs from the beginning—even if it’s theoretically possible to bring manufacturing of apparel and garments back to the U.S. instead of importing from nations like Vietnam and Bangladesh, it would be economically impractical. Higher labor costs for manufacturing would almost certainly lead to higher prices, creating a recipe for an economic slowdown and rising unemployment in other industries.
“I have nothing against U.S. manufacturing jobs returning to some extent—how can one? However, the trajectory is filled with tradeoffs,” says Reinhart. “If you gain two jobs in manufacturing, you might lose four in services.”
In the last 30 years, the number of U.S. manufacturing jobs has fallen to its lowest level since before World War II, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but that time period has still coincided with consistent economic growth and high employment. Real median household income, adjusted for inflation, has nearly doubled to $80,000 since 1945. Outsourcing manufacturing has allowed more Americans to take on more lucrative and less mind-numbing or physically demanding careers.
Plus, experts fear that tariffs could do more harm than good for the manufacturing jobs that do still exist here. Companies like $67 billion (revs) Boeing, which assembles airplanes in a factory in Everett, Washington covering 98 acres as the world’s largest building, buy components from sources overseas, and higher costs on those parts due to tariffs would limit their ability to spend on more workers.
“Most trade is in parts and components, not final goods. That’s where this argument that tariffs will be bringing jobs back to the United States really doesn’t work,” says Nina Pavcnik, professor of economics specializing in international trade and the interim dean of arts and sciences at Dartmouth.
In his Truth Social post announcing the 90-day pause, Trump patted himself on the back with the claim that more than 75 countries have shown interest in negotiating more U.S.-friendly trade deals and have not retaliated, but several other constraints likely played a role in shaping his relaxed stance. Bond yields were rising, signaling expectations of higher inflation in spite of recessionary fears, and Republican politicians were losing support and already fearing primary challenges ahead of next year’s midterms, says Marko Papic, chief strategist and geopolitical expert at BCA Research.
“Trade and tariffs are almost consistently the last, least important issue for Americans. He has chosen to burn through his political capital on an issue that doesn’t matter,” Papic said Wednesday morning, prior to Trump’s announcement of the pause. “Even if you voted for President Trump, you didn’t do it so you can sew your own jeans and pick your own avocados.”
These external forces may continue to soften Trump’s hard-line impulses, but Wednesday’s relief would only be temporary if Trump ramps up the pressure again to see what he can bully other nations into conceding as the end of the pause approaches. Following the 9.5% leap for the S&P 500 on Wednesday, the index sank 3.5% Thursday as the reality of an escalating trade war with China set in.
The last time the stock market had single-day gains larger than Wednesday was on two separate occasions in October 2008, and if history repeats itself, darker days are still ahead—the market didn’t reach its bottom during the Great Recession until March 2009. If the market continues to swoon this summer, investors can only hope they won’t have to pay $10 for a vanilla ice cream cone to comfort themselves.
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