If you run a business that exports to the United States, how big is the tariff you have to pay? In 2025 that question was hard to answer. Between February and December, 53 separate announcements introduced, delayed, reinstated or changed US tariffs, with different countries and products pulled in or exempted each time. Kalina Manova (UCL, CEPR) and her colleagues built a database of every one of those announcements, but they also measured the confusion that those announcements created. She tells Tim Phillips about how tariff confusion has become a second tax on trade, as confusion puts off exporters: but it’s one that raises no revenue. On average, uncertainty about the actual tariff doubled the damage done to trade by the tariff hikes themselves. For some countries it tripled it. Does this result mean that, if the US cleared up the confusion by not changing its tariffs regularly, it could double tariff income for the same impact on trade?



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