Income, Wealth, Equality
The Trump Tariffs and the Economy
The second-term Trump tariff policies have jolted the American economy, with stock indexes plummeting, businesses—large and small—uncertain of pricing, availability of supplies, and the wider impact of tariffs. Consumer confidence has sunk dramatically during the first several months of the Trump administration. Once reliable trading partners were cautious, uncertain of the Trump administration’s intent, uncertain of the tariffs impact, and preparing for retaliatory actions. The robust, recovering American economy, the legacy of the Biden administration, in just a short span of time in 2025 has suffered extraordinary losses. And the economic wounds were all self-inflicted.
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There are glaring realities when it comes to wealth and income in the United States. The US is indeed a wealthy country, with the second highest average individual wealth in OECD countries (behind Switzerland).
But “average wealth” distorts another reality—its very uneven distribution. When looking at median wealth (the middle value) rather than the average wealth, the US falls to 18th among OECD countries.
Here are some stark figures published by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis in June 2024
Bottom 50 percent of all Americans have just 2.5 percent of the entire US household wealth. Average wealth: $51,000.
Top 10 percent hold 67.0 percent of American household wealth. Average wealth: $6,900,000.
Indeed, the wealth of the richest 400 Americans is approximately equal to that of 43 million African Americans.
Source: Ana Hernández Kent and Lowell R. Ricketts, “The State of US Wealth Inequality,” Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, October 22,2024, https://www.stlouisfed.org/institute-for-economic-equity/the-state-of-us-wealth-inequality; Lisa Camner McKay, “How the Racial Wealth Gap Has Evolved—And Why It Persists,” Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, October 3, 2022, https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2022/how-the-racial-wealth-gap-has-evolved-and-why-it-persists