In the run up to the presidential election, the economy and fiscal issues emerged as the most important concern for New Jersey voters, helping to generate high turnout and support for now, president elect Donald Trump, who's promised sweeping new tariffs on imports, tax breaks and aggressive stances on trade relations and he's expected to move quickly on his agenda.

Once sworn into office this January.

Senior correspondent Joanna Gagis takes a deeper look at what a Trump economy will look like for new Jersey a second time around.

If the economy was the number one driver of votes for Donald Trump last week, then what economic policy can we expect under a second Trump term?

Stockton University professor Michael Busler explains he wants to work on reducing the federal deficit.

He's going to vastly increase the supply of energy by approving the Keystone pipeline.

He wants to make sure interest rates remain low.

But Rutgers Business School professor Parul Jain says despite voters feelings, there's not much economy to fix.

The economy is in absolutely great shape.

If you look at GDP growth in the economy, second, third quarter GDP growth came in at 2.8%, which was above expectations.

The unemployment rate at 4.1% is pretty much at full employment.

And inflation numbers have been coming down.

But it's that inflation rate that had voters believing the economy is in shambles, says Rutgers Eagleton poll director Ashley Koning.

Perception is reality when it comes to the economy.

It doesn't matter how strong the economy is actually performing.

If public opinion doesn't see it that way, if voters don't perceive it to be that way and still feel like they have some sort of pinch in their pocketbooks or wallets, they're not going to think the economy is doing well by deregulating all the different markets.

It's going to, encourage economy growth.

That's going to help for a bit.

It's going to hurt the environment.

Yes.

I think probably maybe shortly better.

But then in the long run, when he comes with all his tariffs and whatever he wants to do, I think it's not going to be that great.

And it's those tariffs promised on the campaign trail giving folks on all sides pause.

The trade agreements we have with virtually all of our trading partners are slanted in favor of the partners and to the detriment of the U.S..

He saw that in his first term, he renegotiated a new trade pact with Canada.

Mexico, Japan, South Korea, India and the European Union.

We still have China.

Some of the tariff numbers that he's given, 20% against China right away, 60%, maybe.

And then he's also got, you know, tariffs against, our allies of 10% Mexico, maybe go to 100%.

So the expectation is that, you know, these kind of tariffs numbers, even if we scale them down they're going to be inflationary for the US economy because consumers will end up paying more.

Jain says potentially $3,000 a year for the average customer.

Now people say, well, wait a minute, you're going to end up, we're going to end up paying much higher, prices.

That's going to lead to inflation.

So what Trump says is I'll be able to bring the manufacturing costs down two ways.

One, any product that a corporation was making, overseas and brings back to the U.S., we're going to lower the tax rate from 21% down to 15% should help keep the costs down.

And secondly, more importantly, if he can get the cost of energy cut in half like he says, then the cost to manufacture these products will go down.

I hear your point that yes, it could encourage more manufacturing here in the U.S.. What is the lag time there between prices skyrocketing and new industries blossoming here in the U.S.?

I believe he will give some lag time in other words, he'll say that these, tariffs go into effect next year.

That gives companies enough time to set up manufacturing here and offset some of the impacts of the tariffs.

But Jain says the negative impacts could be long lasting.

Looking at the past history is that world trade is going to shrink.

We saw that during the Great Depression when we applied the Smoot-Hawley tariffs, and it took decades and decades to bring down tariff walls.

There is much more to consider, including labor costs, which is tied to U.S. immigration policy, all of which could be changing soon.

For NJ Spotlight News, I'm Joanna Gagis.