Summary
Trump announced that 25% tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico will take effect on February 1, though a decision on including oil remains pending.
He justified the move by citing undocumented migration, fentanyl trafficking, and trade deficits.
Trump also hinted at new tariffs on China.
Canada and Mexico plan retaliatory measures while seeking to address U.S. concerns.
If oil imports are taxed, it could raise costs for businesses and consumers, potentially contradicting Trump’s pledge to reduce living expenses.
I’m sad seeing all these “Enjoy the collapse, losers!” comments.
Most people on most Lemmy instances, especially here, probably made it VERY clear we didn’t want this pathetic handbag-hobgoblin in charge. Yes, a lot of our countrymen voluntarily gave up their brains for his bullshit, but not all of us, by a long shot.
Policy stopped being directed by the will of the people a long time ago. We aren’t levying tariffs. He is. We , human beings just like you, are trying to keep it together as a grotesque parody of the fall of the Roman Empire plays out around us.
Stop falling for that tribalist nonsense. Love has no borders, and hate is too busy drawing them. Support your brothers and sisters on this Earth, because when the evil wealthy masters of this world set their sights on your democracy, it could happen to your home just as easily, don’t be fooled.
Edit: I’ve gone over my comment multiple times…where the heck did I even insinuate I didn’t vote? We only get one, and like many others, I said a prayer and ticked the box for Kamala’s half-hearted efforts to stopgap and buy us more time to fix this thing. For all the friggin’ good it did.
You didn’t vote. So enjoy the collapse
Nowhere in my post did I even hint that I didn’t vote.
Your vivid imagination can be put to better use than inventing reasons to heap smugness on internet strangers.
(Not enjoying the collapse BTW thx. 👍👍)
What an idiot he is.
Plot twist: Trump is just looking to see if the Americans can stand up for themselves. If they remain silent and do nothing, he will continue to tighten the screws.
P.S. Need to take out a loan for Trump passport at 146% APR, lol
I do ultimately think tariffs will be good for the US. I feel bad for other countries I guess, but I think the US needs to be more productive.
California, seen as a relatively “progressive” state, has a sales tax on everything, and pretty extreme sin taxes. A tariff is like a sales tax, and a sin tax on specific imports.
The way you increase productivity is via exports, not artificially increasing the cost of goods. A sin tax is when you want to stop people from doing things so you make it more expensive. If you want to increase American cement production, you subsidize production.
Adding a tarrif to Canadian cement imports increases cost for imported cement, and encourages domestic producers to increase costs to match. If the competition just got 15% more expensive, there’s no reason for me to not raise my prices 14%.
If the government comes in and says they’ll pay me $15/ton of cement I produce, that encourages me to produce more cement and lower the price to sell it. Now I’m producing more, and I need to hire another machine operator and the economy grows because the lowered cost of cement makes people more willing to do things that need cement.Tariffs are really only good for counteracting other countries subsidies. If Canada were paying manufacturers $20 a ton to produce cement, then applying a $20/ton tarrif makes the prices unbiased.
It’s why our agricultural subsidies are viewed poorly by food scarce nations: we lower the overall market cost for food, and they can’t afford to subsidize their own production, and returning equilibrium on imports would starve people, so they’re trapped in a cycle of being dependent on imported subsidized food while living next to fallow farms.
Canada and Mexico aren’t subsidizing their export industries, and a lot of what we’re trading is in things we can’t or don’t want to handle. You can’t increase American uranium production, off the top of my head.
We had a position of trade strength, which meant that we could afford to import more than we produced because our intangibles were worth more, and what we exported was worth more. Import steel and export tractors. Now we’re saying we want to stop importing steel, making it harder to export tractors, so that we can bring back low paying dangerous jobs.
If you want to see productivity grow trumps way, go get a job as a farmhand picking spinach. Because his policy is basically that we need less engineers and more farm hands.
I’m glad you started your dissertation with “the way you x is via y” because it immediately informed me that I was reading the work of an expert genius and as a smooth brain, when a genius writes, I read.
One question, wouldn’t higher prices on imported cements sort of make local cements automatically cheaper, giving them an advantage without asking them to cut corners? In a free market you will often see a “race to the bottom” on goods, whereby manufactures and producers will cut costs so low that they lose money, so long as there is some other incentives that would lead to profit. Video game consoles are a common example. The console is sold at a loss with the expectation that they will make up the difference on the consumables, games and related services.
If local competitors can produce for lower cost than competitors it may drive more people, who generally just want to save money, to local businesses, creating demand, driving growth.
Video game consoles are sold at a loss on occasion because the marginal cost of game sales is extremely high. There’s no associated product to pair with cement that would drive you to sell it at a loss.
My point was that yes, it will drive people to local businesses, because they will be cheaper. Local businesses have no reason to keep their prices the same if the competition just got more expensive however.
I’m glad you found my comment informative. I’d hate to think I was talking to someone who wanted to say their opinion and then got defensive if someone disagreed with them. It’s a sign of someone with at least a wrinkle or two that they’re open to discussing their thoughts.
For more insight from people even more knowledgeable than me:
https://www.businessinsider.com/what-are-tariffs
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/the-end-of-north-america
https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/federal/trump-tariffs-trade-war/
Well the console example demonstrates long term payout strategies. Another example is in free to play games with microtransactions. You develop a game at a cost, you give it away for free, and you hope that it’s good enough to hook people and get them to spend on “hats”. It’s a lot of money up front to make more later.
So do either of those strategies apply to the manufacturing of physical goods as are being tarifed?
Do you think that Ford is going to sell cars at a loss to make money on service contracts now that their costs are rising because some parts are fabricated in Detroit, assembled in Windsor, and then shipped back for installation in Flint? If it didn’t make sense to sell at a loss before, why would it make sense to do so now?
Do you think that there’s money to be made on getting people hooked on buying wheat perks?
We’re not talking videogame DLC, we’re talking about food, manufacturing materials, electrical power, and physical goods. The price of these things are going up, just like they went up with previous tariffs. This is a super easy case, because he did it to a lesser extent before, and it didn’t do what he’s saying it will. There’s no reason to believe that making the bad choice more vigorously will make it suddenly have a different outcome.
Google “byd china car sell at a loss” and “chicken tax”.
You will see price wars or the race to the bottom in the auto industry and you will see how tariffs on imported cars are one way we have protected domestic manufacturing.
Dude, go reread my first comment. I specifically mention tarrif as a counter to restore market balance after manipulation. These aren’t being used to counteract an anticompetitive subsidy. Raising prices to restore equilibrium and raising prices to disrupt it are very different things.
I know you want this to be something that works, but there’s a reason why reputable economists think this is just the worst idea.
This massively violates the USMCA that he signed
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Someone make this into that Gru meme:
- Slap a 25% tarrif on goods coming from your 3 biggest economic allies
- Economy will strengthen due to American consumers preferring American made alternatives
- There are no American made alternatives
- There are no American made alternatives
Here you go
