Mark Zandi:

There’s two big differences.

The potential scale. I mean, the tariffs that, let’s say, President Biden put into place, those $18 billion additional tariffs on Chinese product, E.V. batteries, solar panels, very strategic, saying, hey, look, you’re not playing fair, you got to play fair, and this is a penalty if you don’t.

In the case of President Trump, again, a lot of uncertainty here, but President Trump is talking about broad-scale tariffs across the board. And the second thing, the uncertainty. Just think about all the switches and changes and this tariff, that tariff, it’s on again, it’s off again. I’m going to impose tariffs on this and on that.

I think businesses are getting dizzy with all that. How can you make a large investment decision, a hiring decision if you don’t know what the tariffs will be? By the way, Amna, the other important point in terms of the uncertainty is, these are being done under executive order. It’s not legislation. It’s not like Congress voting and saying, hey, I want to raise these tariffs.

It’s the president imposing them. So, if I’m a businessperson thinking — seeing that, I know that those tariffs can go away with another executive order, and certainly the next president could change them. So if that’s the case and I’m making a decision about an investment that’s going to last 10, 15, 20 years, I’m just not going to do it, because I just don’t know what those tariffs are going to be. And I don’t know what it means for my business.