The Trump Tariffs: A Case Study
Quality reviewed September 2026
- Grades
- Grades 9-12
- Time
- About two 50-minute class periods
- Includes
- 10 ready-to-teach files
- Format
- Word (.docx) · PowerPoint (.pptx)
- Slide deck
- Guided notes
- Guided notes teacher key
- Activity + answer key
- Quiz + answer key
- Exit ticket + answer key
- Teacher guide
What students do
- Distinguish Section 232 tariffs from Section 301 tariffs and identify which industries each targeted
- Read the U.S.-China tariff escalation timeline chart to identify the largest single-year jump
- Extract retail price increases tied to specific tariffs, washing machines, solar panels, electronics, from a bar chart
- Evaluate the empirical evidence on who benefited and who paid during the trade war
What it covers
- The two tariff authorities, Section 232 on national security grounds and Section 301 on unfair trade practices
- China's retaliation against U.S. soybeans, pork, and Boeing aircraft, and the parallel EU dispute over steel and bourbon
- The 2024-2025 escalation and the trade-off between protecting manufacturers and raising consumer costs
Learning targets
- Trace the Trump tariff strategy from 2018 through 2026, naming the key actions (Section 232, Section 301, EU steel, 2024-2025 expansion)
- Identify which industries the U.S. targeted and how China and the EU retaliated against U.S. exports
- Evaluate evidence on consumer cost vs jobs gained to decide whether the tariff strategy worked
Peek inside
The Strategy in One Sentence
Use tariffs as leverage on trading partners
Punish unfair foreign trade practices
Protect U.S. steel, aluminum, autos, EVs
Reshore manufacturing back to the U.S.
Strategy and Execution
The strategy used tariffs as both PROTECTION and on trading partners.
It aimed to punish unfair foreign practices.
It aimed to RESHORE U.S. back to the U.S.
Trump used Section 232 (national security) on steel and .
Trump used Section (unfair trade) on Chinese goods.
1. Q1. A trade barrier a government places on imported goods, used by the 2018 Trump strategy as both protection for U.S. industries and leverage on trading partners, is a .
Why this matters
Section 232 and Section 301 sound like paperwork until you see what each one did: a soybean farmer losing a foreign buyer, and a family paying more for a washing machine, on opposite ends of the same trade war. This case study splits the two authorities apart early, national security against unfair trade, because merging them is where most classes lose the thread.
Reading the U.S.-China escalation timeline against a retail-price bar chart makes the trade-off concrete: protecting one industry raised prices in another, and China's retaliation against soybeans, pork, and Boeing aircraft shows the cost never stayed on one side. Naming who actually benefited and who paid is the whole exercise.
From one teacher to another
Who actually paid for the tariffs, the manufacturer that got protected or the family buying a washing machine? That's the question the case study makes students answer with real data instead of a political label, working the U.S.-China escalation timeline and a retail-price bar chart to see which industries got hit and which states felt it. I split Section 232 and Section 301 apart early, national security versus unfair trade, because conflating the two is where a lot of classes go sideways on this topic.
Every file in this toolkit
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Activity (Student)
You work for Senator Reed's office, tracing three Trump-era tariff actions and one Biden expansion by law, target, and rate, reading a tariff-by-state chart, an escalation timeline, and a price-increase chart, then recommending how he should vote on extending two tariffs through 2030.
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Activity (Answer Key)
Every tariff action gets its legal basis, rate, and target spelled out, Pennsylvania and Ohio get their exact protected-output dollar figures, and washing machines through Chinese EVs get their price-increase percentages confirmed. A vote-recommendation memo sample wraps up the analysis.
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Exit Ticket (Student)
Opening questions identify the largest percentage tariff hike among the 2024 increases, name the product category with the smallest tariff-driven price jump, and summarize the data on how the 2018 tariffs hit U.S. farmers. Students give one clear cost and one clear benefit before a final call.
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Exit Ticket (Answer Key)
A 100 percent hike on Chinese electric vehicles is the largest 2024 increase, steel-using goods near 2 percent mark the smallest price jump, and a 75 percent drop in soybean exports paired with $28 billion in farm aid names the farmer impact. A verdict, a number, a cost, and a benefit round it out.
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Guided Notes (Student)
Section 232's 25 percent steel tariff gets separated from Section 301's four China lists totaling about $360 billion, and students trace China's retaliation against soybeans and pork next to the EU's hit on bourbon and motorcycles. A jobs-versus-cost chart closes the case.
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Guided Notes (Teacher Key)
The roughly 11,000 jobs added across protected sectors, the $400 to $800 per household hit the Peterson Institute measured, and the $900,000 yearly cost of each steel job protected all stand tallied. Section 232, Section 301, and the 2024 EV and solar tariff rates carry their figures.
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Quiz (Student)
A retaliation item asks how China responded to the 2018 tariffs, a pass-through question asks what share of that cost researchers traced back to U.S. consumers, and a geography question asks which states benefited most.
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Quiz (Answer Key)
China retaliates with a 25 percent tariff on soybeans, pork, and autos, the pass-through rate lands near 95 to 100 percent, and Midwest states get credited with most of the benefit.
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Slides
National security tariffs on steel and aluminum sit next to unfair trade tariffs reaching $360 billion of Chinese goods, the two tracks the deck opens with. China's retaliation on soybeans and the EU's response on bourbon and motorcycles lead into a map of who got protected.
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Teacher Guide
A Pennsylvania senator's vote on extending Chinese EV tariffs sets up the closing memo, and discussion prompts weigh concentrated benefits in six states against costs spread across all fifty.
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