| This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, a mercantilist settlement of Bloomberg Opinion's opinions. On Sundays, we look at the major themes of the week past and how they will define the week ahead. Sign up for the daily newsletter here. What's the most beautiful word in the English language? For Philip Marlow in Dennis Potter's brilliant 1986 miniseries The Singing Detective, it was "elbow." Erma Bombeck chose "benign." A curious trio — JRR Tolkien, Drew Barrymore in Donnie Darko, and an Italian savant in the obscure 1903 novel Gee-Boy — all agreed on "cellar door." Dorothy Parker, ever the wag, had two: "check" and "enclosed." Former President Donald Trump is from the Dorothy Parker school of transactional linguistics. "To me, the most beautiful word in the dictionary is tariff, and it's my favorite word," he told Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait at the Economic Club of Chicago on Tuesday. "It needs a public relations firm to help it, but to me, it's the most beautiful word in the dictionary." Well, he is the expert after all: However, no amount of public relations will make Trumponomics even mildly attractive to the Bloomberg Opinion crew. "If the US puts tariffs on imports, including imports from its allies, it can expect many of those allies to retaliate with tariffs of their own," Tyler Cowen writes. "That means a foreign plant in the US would be at a disadvantage when selling abroad. Companies might do better putting a plant in Canada, from which they could export more freely to Mexico and the European Union, not to mention Asia and other parts of the world. Such factors blunt America's ability to attract foreign direct investment through higher tariff rates. The US domestic market is important, but it is not everything." Trump seems to think it is everything. "The tariffs are to force companies to relocate to American shores — and he's proposing to set them far higher than in his first administration to make sure they come," John Authers explains. "Any mercantilist settlement like this will be difficult to broker, with benefits a long time in the future. Whether he really has the diplomatic skills to pull this off is wide open to question." Oh easy, for the world's greatest dealmaker. Ernie Tedeschi, director of economics at the Budget Lab at Yale University, brings history to bear. "In the early 1800s, when tariffs were the primary source of federal revenue, Americans had to pay astronomical rates on most imports," he explains. "Policymakers at the time, and some economists since, argued that high tariffs made sense in the early 19th century given that the country's domestic industry was still in its infancy." Fast-forward to the 21st century: "Prices would rise and real household incomes would decline" should Trump have his way, Tedeschi's research finds. "While a tenth of all consumer spending is on imports, a quarter of consumer goods spending is imported, so the tariffs would pinch households considerably. Consumers would face price increases of 1.2% to 5.1% depending on the specific proposal. That's like suddenly getting between seven months and 2.5 years' worth of normal inflation." Inflation, it seems, is Trump's' other favorite word — at least when it comes to bashing his opponent. But would his tariffs tame or inflame it? "Inflation, which the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris administration has decidedly tamed, will climb back," writes LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman in a guest column. "And if Trump pursues tax plans like last time, which were a bonanza for — guess who — real estate investors, it could distort the broader economy more than help it. The problem with Trump is that he practices grifter capitalism." Harris has clearly won Hoffman's vote, and those of other biz bigshots like Mark Cuban and Netflix founder Reed Hastings. But she faces a paradox: The Biden-Harris administration has pretty much echoed Trump's view that trade is a zero-sum endeavor and that the US has been unfairly beaten down, especially by China. "Harris appears to see the harm that higher and wider tariffs would do, but how can she say this plainly without seeming to abandon Bidenomics?" asks the Bloomberg editorial board. "Start by applauding the goals of that program while recognizing the role that trade should play in advancing them. Cost-effective public investment, especially in clean energy, is essential. China's policies — including excessive or disguised subsidies, state-directed lending and more — should indeed be challenged." For all the talk of abortion rights and the Ukraine war and Dachshunds for dinner in Ohio, this election is coming down to the economy. The editors think the vice president needs to keep that in mind: "As Nov. 5 draws close, she should articulate a more enlightened agenda — one that draws a clear contrast with Trump's ham-handed edicts and sees trade, correctly, as indispensable for a thriving economy." For Harris, "270" should be the most beautiful word in the world. Bonus Words Words Words Reading: - BRICs summit, Oct. 22: India Is Testing Its Friends' Trust, and Patience — Mihir Sharma
- Tesla earnings, Oct. 23: Musk Keeps Paying for X — Matt Levine
- U. Michigan consumer sentiment, Oct 25: Markets Return to a Trump Tipping Point — John Authers
Speaking of favorite words, Frank Wilkinson comes up with one that makes "cellar door" sound positively pulchritudinous. "Donald Trump speaks at a fourth-grade level but without him I might never have looked up the word 'stochastic'," Frank writes. "I began noticing the word in academic circles as Trump made his first run for president in 2016. Stochastic is an adjective, derived from Greek, meaning randomly determined. In social science, it suggests a random probability distribution that may be statistically meaningful without being precisely predictable. Back then, political scientists weren't using 'stochastic' to describe Trump's meandering speech patterns, which have only become more disjointed and fantastical. They were talking about the violence that he generates, randomly yet also certainly."  Source: Truth Social Randomly yet certainly, Trump's violent vision is hitting home with a traditionally Democratic constituency: Latino voters. "How did the Democratic Party end up losing an important slice of its coalition to a man who is promising to carry out mass deportations of immigrants and who traffics in dehumanizing rhetoric to scapegoat people of color?" asks Erika D. Smith. "Bad branding" and the baggage of Biden's immigration policies, Erika suggests, which cost Harris the endorsement of the largest Border Patrol union: "The union's president, Paul Perez, who is Latino, joined Trump on stage at a campaign rally in Arizona with about a dozen other agents, many of them also Latino, and warned that if Harris is elected, 'every community in this great country is going to go to hell.'" From stochastic to estocástico: In any language, it seems, Trump still has the best words. Notes: Please send enclosed checks and feedback to Tobin Harshaw at tharshaw@bloomberg.net. | 
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