Google searches for the word “tariffs” skyrocketed as Donald Trump declared victory in the 2024 presidential election. In his first presidential term, Trump employed tariffs against China in general, but also ordered tariffs on specific goods from all countries, including solar panels, washing machines, steel, and aluminum. And in his 2024 campaign, he promised 10% tariffs across the board on all imported goods – and 60% for goods made in China.
Trump seems to view tariffs as a financial band-aid for everything from closed U.S factories to China’s rising global power, and from minimizing the risk of developing new technologies to the cost of increased border security – and as a way to discourage countries and companies from utilizing currencies other than the U.S. dollar.
Any legitimate increase to prices will be used as justification for prices of completely unaffected products and services. Record profits ahead.
There’s not much that would be “completely unaffected” by a blanket tariff on products from a whole country with a huge trade footprint.
The cost of the tariffs will be far lower than the increase as well.
The author bends over backwards to be even-handed and still can’t make an argument that across-the-board tariffs are good economic policy. She basically just switches to, “I guess they can be politically advantageous over taxes that are more obvious? Maybe? But there’s no real economic upside.”
Tariffs serve a purpose when your goal is to incentivize local production or materials and goods. Make foreign goods more expensive so that local ones are more attractive.
The common saying is that when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. In this case, all he has is a screwdriver but he thinks it’s a hammer, and he’s looking for nails.
They work at making things cost more to consumers who are buying the products, and enriching the countries sending them to where they are going.
That’s not correct, an import tariff is a tax charged by the government receiving the imported goods, which then enriches the receiving country.
Export tariffs are similar but charged by the company exporting the goods, that is not what’s at issue here. Although that’ll probably happen in retaliation.
Yeah, so the companies importing goods aren’t going to raise prices based on that. Sure, pal.
The point is that it’s not enriching the exporting country. It’s a tax paid by the importing company to its own government. Europe, Canada, Mexico, and China stand to gain nothing if Trump enacts these tariffs. It will only result in reduced exports by the targeted countries, and the customer paying more.
