Six months later, the future of Trump's tariffs is murkier than ever

• Trump's attempt to change the global trade order caused some pain for U.S. importers and for everyday Americans. But it has also, for now, worked far better than even some of the optimists expected.

Yes, but: The trade war isn't over, nor has it even really reached the end of the beginning.

• New tariffs are still being implemented, collections aren't fully matching what's been imposed, and a looming Supreme Court case could end up throwing much of the program out the window entirely.
• But the fundamental argument — that the U.S. can impose huge tariffs that generate big, deficit-cutting revenue without triggering a recession — is so far on track.

State of play: Torsten Slok, chief economist at the private equity firm Apollo Global Management, is one of the best-known names on Wall Street.

• In mid-April, when the tariffs were first announced, Slok projected that the impact would be so quick and so severe that the economy could fall into a full-blown recession.
• This week, Slok reported that so many sectors of the economy were so strong, it might actually be overheating, which would call for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates and cool things down. "The consensus has been wrong since January," Slok wrote.
• He's not alone. Many of those who called for a recession have walked back those estimates in the face of rising consumer spending and growing business investment.

Reality check: That said, it's not like everything is coming up (heavily tariffed) roses.

• A new KPMG survey of 300 C-suite executives out Thursday morning says 44% have raised prices for customers, 71% intend to in the next six months, 38% have paused hiring and 44% have conducted layoffs.
• The farm economy is, as Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins put it this week, "not in a good place." China has stopped buying commodities like soybeans from American growers, leading to billions of dollars in lost sales and a looming bailout.
• Nowhere is the pain more evident than in the grocery store, where Trump promised prices would fall and instead they're rising at the fastest clip in three years. Nearly half of the respondents to a new Axios Vibes survey by The Harris Poll said it's harder to afford groceries than it was a year ago.
• For all of Trump's yearslong insistence that Americans don't pay for tariffs, the data is clear that they do, almost entirely.

Zoom out: There's also the pending matter of the other stated aim of Trump's tariffs: returning manufacturing to U.S. shores.

• The revenue's flowing, and so are the pledges to build factories and expand domestic production.
• But six months in, shovels have been slow to hit dirt, and even if everyone honors their word, it'll be a year or more before some of that new capacity starts coming online.

• The risk is that American businesses and consumers keep bearing tariff costs, while reaping few benefits — like more jobs.

There's still no trade compact with China, just a rolling series of 90-day extensions that have cooled tensions somewhat, without solving decades-long and seemingly intractable problems.

• The Chinese economy has taken its lumps, but it hasn't fallen out of bed entirely. The country continues to have the U.S. boxed into a difficult position over rare earth minerals, agriculture sales, control of TikTok and other hot-button issues.
• In many ways, the trade war will have been all for naught if there isn't ultimately a grand bargain between the world's two largest economies.
• Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent suggested Thursday morning that a rescue package is imminent for U.S. soybean farmers who have lost sales to China in the trade war.

What to watch: The next few months will be key.

• If the Supreme Court rules that Trump didn't have the authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose tariffs, 70% or more of what's been levied could be off the table.
• The administration is already trying to replace some of those tariffs with more durable authorities, like the existing Section 232 and Section 301 tariff rules, but officials acknowledge they're not as effective a blunt instrument.
• If what's been collected so far has to be refunded, the burden on the Treasury Department could be "terrible," Bessent has said.
• There are also more tariffs coming, Trump says, like semiconductors and robots — and the risk of others not yet hinted at but always possible.

The bottom line: The trade war hasn't gone how the skeptics expected. Predicting what will happen next may be even harder.