The inimitable Nat King Cole sang this verse in 1950: 'Oh what I'd give for that wonderful phrase, to hear those three little words.'  We feel the same way right now, except the words are these: 'I Don't Know.'

According to economists, TV anchors, union leaders, and just about everyone else, Donald Trump's tariffs will be ruinous, fabulous, catastrophic, and marvelous.  They will usher in a new 'Golden Age' and another 'Great Depression.'  Everyone must have an opinion, but what you don't hear is the undeniable truth – no one really knows how this will eventually play out.  It could lead to the best of times, the worst of times, or somewhere in between.

What we do know is that many Americans feel that they must pick a side.  Trump haters are positive that tariffs will demolish the economy.  House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries proclaims that April 2nd wasn't 'Liberation Day,' but rather 'Recession Day.'  I'll see your 'recession' and raise you a 'depression,' chimes in the International Chamber of Commerce, predicting a 1930s-style cataclysm.

Meanwhile, the president and his team seem to truly believe that the tariffs will ignite an economic nirvana in which U.S. factories boom, blue-collar workers thrive, and everyone lives happily ever after.  Donald Trump is rolling the dice, betting the farm, and going for broke … pick the cliché of your choice.  Will it work?  We don't know, you don't know, the self-proclaimed experts don't know.

Sixteen Nobel Prize-winning economists recently signed a letter warning that tariffs will lead to doom, just like the economists who assured us that Biden's inflation was 'transitory,' and the 'intelligence experts' who positively knew that Hunter's laptop was a Russian plant.

Earlier this week, Republican Senator John Kennedy, erudite as always, said this: 'For every economist, there's an equal and opposite economist, and they're both usually wrong.'  His pithy conclusion: 'The truth is that we do not know yet what the impact of these tariffs is going to be.'

That's an eloquent way of saying something very simple:  'I don't know.'  It's a tremendously valuable three-word, nine-letter phrase we could all utter more often.  Try it; it won't hurt a bit!