U.S. stocks saw their worst drop since 2020 after President Trump announced sweeping new tariffs—10% on all imports and higher rates on goods from 60 countries, including major trade partners like the EU. The move, intended to boost American manufacturing, sparked fears of a global trade war, prompting threats of retaliation and stoking concerns about inflation and a possible recession.

“The U.S. has long used tariffs to collect revenue, aid manufacturing and exert power,” Andrew Cohen, professor of history, tells USA Today. “But I can’t think of a trade war initiated so randomly in a time of peace and prosperity.”

In the Guardian article, “America’s Brexit? Trump’s historic gamble on tariffs has been decades in the making,” Cohen weighs in on Trump's statement that decades of U.S. prosperity “came to a very abrupt end” with the Great Depression from 1929. “It would have never happened if they had stayed with the tariff policy,” Trump claims. “It would have been a much different story.”

“It’s what we would call a lie. False. Not true,” Cohen says. “He’s wrong. No one thinks that. Even conservative economists don’t think that. Even protectionist economists don’t think that.”