Dhaka, Feb. 6 -- This note responds to Helal Uddin Ahmed's piece "Pitfalls of Trumpian tariffs" (P4, FE, January 30, 2026) by examining the analytical assumptions underlying the critique rather than the policy itself.

The critique of Trumpian tariffs rests on a familiar and largely accurate observation: tariffs raise domestic prices, and American consumers bear most of the immediate cost. Empirical studies, including those cited by the author, convincingly show that tariffs function in practice as a consumption tax rather than a direct levy on foreign producers. On this narrow point, the argument is sound. Tariffs are not costless, and they do not extract foreign wealth in the simplistic way political slogans suggest.

Yet stopping the a...