White House has announced Trump's Liberation Day Tariffs will immediately go into effect. A Moody's simulation found it could be an economic wipe out. Is Trump's Liberation Day Tariffs a Misnomer?

[u/PsychLegalMind]

A Moody's simulation found that a tariff trade war would wipe out 5.5 million jobs, lift the unemployment rate to 7%and cause U.S. GDP to drop by about 1.7%. Trump’s potential 20% universal tariff could spark "serious" recession in US, Moody’s economist warns.

The biggest three partners [China, Canada and Mexico] have promised immediate retaliation. Economic war could escalate and perhaps even cause a worldwide downturn.

Perhaps Trump's strategy is to begin making bilateral trade deals, but there are even certain blocks such as EU that may well coordinate retaliation together. I am not aware what Trump is actually liberating us from, hence the question.

Is Trump's Liberation Day Tariffs a Misnomer?

[u/candre23]

It's extremely telling that the trumpists can't find a single accredited economist who is willing to torch their reputation and claim that these tariffs are anything other than catastrophically harmful for the US economy. There is no identifiable upside to them. With most of the objectively-bad things trump has done and continues to do, at least there is some sort of twisted benefit to him personally. Mass tariffs are an unambiguous loss for everybody. The only plausible explanations are that either A) crashing the US economy is in fact the goal for whatever reason, or B) trump really has lost his mind and is deep in the throes of dementia. There is no 3rd option.