One hundred days into Trump’s second presidency, the U.S. had its worst quarter in three years. The country’s gross domestic product, the value of all goods and services, shrank at an 0.3% annual rate in the first three months of the year, down from a 2.4% increase at the end of last year.

Imports drove the change, as companies scrambled to bring in foreign goods ahead of announced tariffs. The trade gap subtracted from economic growth.

For financial markets, the 7% drop in the S&P 500 is the worst start to a presidential term since Gerald R. Ford took over from Richard M. Nixon in August 1974 after the Watergate scandal, the New York Times reported Wednesday. More than $6.5 trillion was wiped from the value of public companies.

Economists have noted the strength of the economy Trump inherited with the stock market rising from one record high to another under Biden.

In celebrating the first 100 days of Trump’s presidency, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at a briefing on Monday that Trump is using tariffs as leverage to force other countries into negotiating with the United States, though no major deals have been announced.

But even fiercely loyal Republicans question the wisdom of Trump’s tariffs. “They are not going to work and they are going to prove to be political poison,” former U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm told the Houston Chronicle on Tuesday.

Trump has placed tariffs of up to 145% on Chinese goods, prompting China to hit back with a 125% tax on U.S. products. He’s also introduced a 10% tax on goods from most other countries, while threatening to add on much higher rates for dozens of those nations after 90 days.

Gramm, a professional economist, is backing economists who issued a statement earlier this month that free trade leads to higher per-capita incomes, faster rates of economic growth and more economic efficiency. He penned an op-ed with Donald J. Boudreux — an economist and co-director of the Program on the American Economy and Globalization at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia — that takes President Trump to task for misleading the public on tariffs.

“Based on a series of verifiably false grievances — wages haven’t grown in 50 years, manufacturing has been hollowed out by imports, countries with trade surpluses are ‘ripping us off’—Mr. Trump used constitutionally questionable powers to abrogate congressionally approved trade agreements and undermine the world’s trading system. Markets convulsed in anticipation of the massive wealth annihilation that would accompany the shredding of global supply chains and a transition to a more protectionist world. The continuation of current trade policies will likely produce a worldwide recession, and even if Mr. Trump’s policies succeed in bringing back manufacturing jobs, the U.S. economy will be less efficient, economic growth will be stunted, and most Americans will be worse off,” they wrote.

Local companies are wary of tariffs. We all should be. Our representative in Congress, Jeff Hurd, is right to push the Trade Review Act of 2025, which requires that unilateral tariffs proposed by the executive branch receive congressional authority.

We all agree that China does not play by the international rules of commerce, but tariffs are not the appropriate lever to bring them into compliance, particularly tariffs on our closest and longest allies.