City Council leaders lambast tariffs, then lambast ‘economic whiplash’

Negotiating and crafting the city budget is much like landing a plane, as Mayor Eric Adams often likes to say. However, pilots’ lives become quite difficult when they are suddenly surrounded by giant storm clouds, buffeted with turbulence, told one thing by air traffic control and another by their flying instruments.

This seems to be the current reality for city government as President Donald Trump suddenly announced pauses on tariffs for certain countries while hiking tariffs on China. This came shortly after New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and City Council Finance Chair Justin Brannan lambasted Trump and his protectionist economic policies in front of his own building on Wall Street. 

The two raised alarm bells, warning small businesses and working families in the city of price increases and job layoffs in the midst of an ongoing affordability crisis already plaguing many New Yorkers. The latest news came as a relief to investors and business owners, but it added more confusion in an already haywire economic environment and complicates the ability for city officials to plan effectively with the budget due at the end of June.

“One minute Trump’s tariffs are on, the next there’s a pause. There is no plan, no strategy, just economic whiplash,” Brannan said in a statement to City & State. “What we’re seeing from the White House isn’t leadership. It’s complete and total chaos.” 

The tariff announcement follows another clawback by the federal government of congressionally allocated funds, this time in the form of an additional $107 million federal grants awarded to the city to cover the cost of asylum-seeker care. 

Brannan and Adams said the city is planning to set aside around $2 billion for programs and services at risk of losing federal funds. But, for essential services such as Medicaid which receive $57 billion in funding from the federal government, such an amount won’t come close to covering potential cuts citywide.  

In her speech in front of the Trump building, Speaker Adams cautioned New Yorkers on the limits of city government to stem the fallout from the federal government’s actions. Average real disposable income per household was estimated to decline by $3,789 per year as a result of Trump’s tariff policies before the targeted pauses according to the Yale Budget Lab.

“We can only do so much to blunt the most devastating consequences,” Adams said. “When Trump and his allies are coming after your Medicaid, SNAP benefits, jobs, housing and retirement funds while raising prices you pay, there is no safeguard.”

Both Speaker Adams and Brannan are running for higher office. Speaker Adams is running in the Democratic primary for mayor, and Brannan is running in the Democratic primary for comptroller.

On Tuesday, Mayor Adams was willing to give Trump the benefit of the doubt on tariffs, noting, “whatever we were doing, it was not working,” at his off-topic presser at City Hall. “Once again, Speaker Adams has chosen fear-mongering for her own political gain, instead of gathering the facts and providing a thoughtful analysis to New Yorkers,” said City Hall spokesperson Liz Garcia. “We have seen this show before, and New Yorkers deserve better than a leader who acts without thinking.”

Things could change by the end of this sentence, but at the moment, 75 countries have been spared from tariffs for 90 days while tariffs on China, our third largest trading partner, increased to 125%. Only time will tell the exact impact Trump’s economic policies will have on New Yorkers’ wallets and the city’s budget plans going forward. 

“The 90-day pause…is only a temporary reprieve from the five-alarm fire that still threatens our economy,” Speaker Adams said in a statement. “If Trump’s tariffs go into effect, they will threaten our city and county.”