Are Trump's Tariffs Helping Ethereum, or Hurting It?

When President Trump imposed tariffs on foreign goods imported into the U.S., the resulting chaos sent many assets in the same downward direction. But this behavior of the market doesn't really make sense across the board. After all, cryptocurrencies like Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) aren't U.S. retailers whatsoever, nor are they directly exposed to the health of U.S consumers, and obviously they aren't U.S. exporters, so the link between new tariffs and their economic health (as well as their price performance) is indirect at best.

But could the tariffs be dampening sentiment enough to overwhelm the positive and real impacts of Ethereum's ever-improving blockchain technology? Let's dive in.

Image source: Getty Images.

This coin is perpetually suffering from a volatile macro environment

Given that tariffs are taxes on imported goods which are paid by the end consumers of those goods, in practice they can lift input costs at the same time as consumer prices.

Ethereum isn't consumer facing, but it's still not insulated from those dynamics. The coin still tends to ride the waves of global risk appetite, macro sentiment, liquidity, and policy uncertainty. Tariffs throw all of those factors into disarray, and not for the better for risk assets like Ethereum.

Nonetheless, let's keep things in perspective; Ethereum's price is up by 63% since the start of April 2025, when the tariffs were implemented. So it's pretty clear that the tariffs aren't raining on this coin's parade too much, even if they're making it more volatile. Of course, new tariff scares could still trigger broader risk-off moves and dampen sentiment such that crypto is dragged downward along with stocks.

The roadmap keeps delivering

The main reason that Ethereum is continuing to grow is that its developers keep delivering on the chain's roadmap for major and minor upgrades. As a result of their hard work in 2025, the chain launched a pair of significant updates, Pectra and Fusaka, both of which improved its ability to scale without spiking its gas fees for users.

Importantly, there's more where those came from. The next update, which is slated for 2026, is called Glamsterdam, and it'll be a major unlock for the chain because it'll open the door for parallel processing of transactions, thereby massively improving Ethereum's scaling performance, increasing speeds (a long-standing problem) and likely reducing costs at the same time.

The other important thing to appreciate here is that upgrades to the network can, have, and will continue to strengthen Ethereum's long-run utility and shore up the investment thesis for buying and holding it, but don't in any way guarantee that the coin will behave smoothly in the short run. Tariffs and other macroeconomic disruptions are still going to be capable of bruising sentiment badly and causing months of pain for investors.

So are the tariffs helping or hurting?

For now, they're more likely to be a headwind, because they add uncertainty to the macro environment Ethereum depends on. But over a multiyear horizon, Ethereum's consistent execution on its roadmap is almost certainly going to be a much stronger driver than that headwind, assuming the upgrade pipeline keeps arriving on schedule and without major security incidents.

Alex Carchidi has positions in Ethereum. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Ethereum. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.