Donald Trump has promised a 10% tariff across the board for all goods entering the United States if elected. This market will settle as YES if Donald Trump gets elected and in any one quarter of 2025, the US weighted average tariff is at least 6%. For the last quarter we have data at this time, second quarter of 2024, the number was 2.4%. It was at 3.5% at its highest level of the Trump presidency.
Data is sourced from the Federal Reserve Economic Data website (link below). This market will settle as soon as Callum Williams, senior economics writer at The Economist, has calculated the number has crossed the 6% threshold for any quarter in 2025, or it hasn’t for any of the quarters. If, when he does his calculations for the fourth quarter of 2025, the 6% threshold has not been met, this market will then settle NO. This market will settle as YES if either an initial estimate or any revision for any of the first three quarters of 2025 crosses the 6% threshold while the market is open. The fourth quarter number will be based on initial data and the market will close after that data is available at the latest.
If Donald Trump loses the election, this market will settle as N/A. If Donald Trump wins the election but a different president takes office at any point, this market will settle according to the same rules based on the US weighted tariff average for each quarter.
If Callum Williams is unavailable to conduct the analysis, a suitable replacement will be found.
See data here: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1wn5e
Callum Williams on X: https://x.com/econcallum
1,000
3.00So, high tariffs were imposed on 2nd April, which conveniently is the start of a quarter. It's now pretty much the end of June, which is the end of the same quarter. Tariffs haven't gone down yet.
So anybody betting NO must be hoping something like >40% of the value of imported products is in exempt categories? (Actually more than that, given that some tariffs are higher than the blanket 10%)
This source estimates about 15%. There's very little chance it's gonna be below 6%. https://budgetlab.yale.edu/research/state-us-tariffs-june-17-2025#:~:text=Key%20Takeaways&text=After%20consumption%20shifts%2C%20the%20average,loss%20of%20%242%2C000%20in%202025%24.
@Fion I get that TACO is a thing, but 6% isn't very high, and market resolution just needs one quarter. I think it's just a case of waiting for the official stats now. He'd need to put tarrifs negative for the last 9 days to bring the average below 6%
I don't know if Kalshi and Polymarket are still hilariously undervalued... Maybe it's time for me to do my second-ever real money bet...
@Fion the order book on Polymarket doesn't look that deep. I'm not sure if I'm reading it right (https://polymarket.com/event/will-trump-impose-large-tariffs-in-first-6-months) but it looks like you can only bet up to $5,600 for ~$500 profit on YES.
@cthor I mean, that's a lot more money than I would want to bet anyway. The only other time I've made a real money bet I put down £20.
I feel gutted to have lost 2000M on US bombing Iran. There's no way I'm betting significant amounts of real money!
(And it's kind of all moot, because realistically I'm not going to even bother to figure out how the site works, if I can use it in UK, putting in bank details etc...)
@Fion curiously, the order book on Polymarket now only has $1,900 on NO... Someone just withdrew the most significant NO order at 90% in the last 6 hours. They watching this comment section? 👀
@LyetKynes Being appealed. There are other sources of tariff-raising powers. Did it double the chance of tariffs staying under 6% this quarter?
@MartinRandall Kalshi 76% for the full year, Poly 71% for just Q1/Q2. Still some TACO going on here too.
@Joshua the thing is if the markets price in TACO, there is no reason to CO, except inflation and he can handwave that
@Joshua many Manifolders buying YES because they have a low opinion of the president but some contrarians buying NO because they have a low opinion of the president.
The total U.S. average effective tariff rate is 17.8%
@TimothyJohnson5c16 are you suggesting that while 1:00-1:15 and 1:15-1:30 are quarters of an hour, 1:05-1:20 isn't? 😄