Tag Archives: tariffs

business news, economic news

Trump inscribe’s hideous legacy

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What does it say about a U.S. president who hears from the top economists on Earth that a policy he is considering would bring unvarnished disaster for Americans’ life savings … but then goes ahead with the decision to proceed?

It tells me that the president is hellbent on inscribing his place as the worst president in U.S. history.

How in the name of economic sanity can Donald J. Trump impose tariffs on our closest allies and most reliable trading partners and then watch as retirement accounts vaporize in real time?

He has through executive action spurred an international trade war, guaranteed a huge spike in inflation, forced the nation into a negative economic growth pattern and cost Americans billions of dollars in their retirement accounts.

Where I come from, that makes Trump the worst president in the history of the republic.

He doesn’t take advice. He heeds only his overfed “gut” and his “hunch.” He seeks to punish nations for “ripping us off,” yet imposes tariffs on such economic giants as American Samoa and Vanuatu.

Yours truly’s retirement account is vanishing before my eyes. Why? Because the numbskull in chief doesn’t care one damn bit about protecting the people who pledged to protect when he took office.

business news, economic news

Trump to raise the cost … of everything!

Donald J. Trump, with the stroke of his Sharpie pen, instituted tariffs on every item this nation imports from Mexico, Canada and China.

It means that the cost of all the things we purchase from these formerly friendly trading partners is going to cost you and me more money that many of us cannot afford to pay.

Trump, though, keeps operating on the myth that he is punishing those countries. Bullsh**! That’s all it is. The self-proclaimed “king of debt,” the guy who once thought of himself as a whiz-kid wheeler and dealer is going to inflict pain on those he took an oath to protect and defend.

What in the name of fiscal sanity is rattling around that strangely coiffed noggin of his?

Do you remember when this dipsh** took office the first time and he negotiated what he called the greatest trade deal in business history with Canada and Mexico. He tossed aside the North American Free Trade Agreement and replaced it with another deal he said would protect all three nations from economic harm.

Well, buckle up boys and girls. The numbskull in chief is about to inflict all kinds of harm on all of us. If you’re someone who trades in fruits and veggies imported from Mexico, you’ll pass the cost of those goods on to consumers. If you purchase timber from Canada, you’ll do the same thing. Oh, and computer chips and all manner of household goods imported from China? Same thing, gang.

Trump’s economic policies — such as they exist — are intended only to inflict maximum pain on Americans. That’s you and me, man!

national news

Trump 2.0 worse than before

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The second version of Donald Trump’s foray into national governance is turning out to be the nightmare so many of us feared it would become.

He has enlisted the aid of a zillionaire who’s moved into an office in White House, a guy who is making decisions without any authorization from Congress or the courts.

Now we have Trump himself declaring his intention to “take over” the Gaza region that’s been torn apart by the war between Israel and the terrorists known as Hamas. He well might send U.S. troops to oversee the takeover of a sovereign land … and to think this moron was elected while promising to end warfare as we have known it.

Trump’s hatchet man wants to dismantle the Department of Education. There’s no plan for what we can do to shore up public education. Nor is there a plan for how to govern effectively by slashing bazillions of dollars from the federal government.

Confusion anyone? Chaos?

Dude imposed tariffs on Mexico and Canada, only to pull them back after those countries bitched their way out from them. China, the third tariff target, is imposing tariffs of its own against U.S. products.

Give me some relief from this madness. Make no mistake, it’s sheer and unalterated madness coming from the West Wing.

I hope the 77 million Americans who cast their ballots for this dipsh** are happy with what they’re getting. The other half of the country and I are not.

business news

Trade war set to begin

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Let’s be crystal clear about what is going to commence among three North American neighbors now that Donald Trump has declared his intention to impose tariffs on imported goods.

Canada and Mexico, two of our strongest allies and most dependable trading partners, have been targeted — along with China — as candidates for massive tariffs on all goods delivered to the United States.

Who will pay the tariff? You and I will. Our neighbors, too, So will our loved ones. We will shoulder an immense burden as importers seek to pass the cost of the tariffs on to those of us who use the products imported from the three tariff-strapped nations.

I do not understand what Trump is trying to prove with these tariffs. He isn’t punishing those nations. They will respond by imposing tariffs on goods they import from U.S. exporters.

Hey, didn’t Trump negotiate a new free-trade agreement with Canada and Mexico during his term in office? It was supposed to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement. Trump called it a superior pact.

Well, it’s no longer superior to anything.

Buckle up, my fellow patriots. We’re going to pay through the nose for a lot of goods.

Uncategorized

Tariffs will hurt us … not them!

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My head is about to explode as I try to figure out the logic behind Donald Trump’s threat to impose a 30% tariff on all good imported into the United States of America.

Indeed, whoever is advising the incoming moron in chief needs to have his or her head examined. Maybe a bug has eaten part of their brain, too … if you get my drift.

What no one is telling Trump is that these tariffs won’t be felt in countries such as China, Mexico, Canada and Japan, all nations from which we import billions of dollars of goods annually.

The 30% tariff will hit U.S. consumers straight in the pocketbook. We will pay more for these items. The tariffs will hit us hard, not the producers who make these items.

You want to see inflation run wild? Let’s just see how this plays out when the Commerce Department starts releasing Consumer Price Index data in the coming months.

Trump keeps bellowing how he wants to “put America first” when he returns to the White House. This notion he has pitched to the gullible among us will do nothing of the sort.

economic news

Tariffs harm U.S. economy, experts say

It turns out that Donald Trump’s alleged expertise on international trade policy is, shall we say, a bit overstated.

Put another way, the president’s decision to impose tariffs on imported goods has harmed U.S. taxpayers and cost American jobs he vowed would return in droves.

Whose analysis is this? The Federal Reserve has released a study laying out what it says has been the impact of the tariffs across the land. It hasn’t been good, according to the Fed analysis.

This likely will bring some recrimination from Trump, who will say the numbers are wrong, they’re cooked up in some star chamber kitchen and that they’re intended to throw the upcoming election into his opponents’ corner.

As The Hill reports: “We find that tariff increases enacted in 2018 are associated with relative reductions in manufacturing employment and relative increases in producer prices,” the report by Fed economists Aaron Flaaen and Justin Pierce reads.

This is pretty in line with what many economists have said all along about tariffs, which is that they don’t harm the producers of the goods being imported into this country, but that they inflate the prices we pay here.

Trump is having none of it. He keeps insisting that tariffs are part of a successful strategy to “put America first.” He wants to punish countries that don’t play fair in the game of international trade. I certainly understand the president’s stated reason for wanting a fairer playing field.

Why, though, must he invoke tariffs that do two things immediately? They boost prices on imported goods, which is a de facto tax and they rattle the daylights out of financial markets, affecting the retirement portfolios of millions of Americans … such as, well — my wife and me!

This so-called trade policy damn sure isn’t making America great again.

International news

Let’s give credit where it’s due on immigration

It’s time to hand out a bit of credit where I believe it is due.

The Donald Trump administration has worked out an agreement with Mexico that aims to crack down on what’s been called “irregular migration” through Mexico into the United States.

The payoff is the suspension of a 5 percent tariff on all products imported from Mexico into this country. That, right there, is reason to cheer this result.

Mexico is going to send about 6,000 national guard troops to border entry points, concentrating on its border with Guatemala; it also is going to hold those seeking asylum in this country and start working to grant them such status in Mexico; the United States also will be able to return Central American migrants to Mexico while their asylum status is being adjudicated.

OK, it’s not the perfect solution. However, it remove for the immediate and medium-term future the threat of nonsensical tariffs that the president threatened to impose. Let’s get real: The tariffs do more damage to American consumers than to Mexican exporters, as the tariff only will add to the cost of goods coming into this country.

Trump sought to hold the tariff threat over Mexico. His tactic seems to have worked. Mexico sent its foreign minister to Washington to negotiate a deal with the State Department, Homeland Security and the White House.

How much direct involvement included the president himself, of course, remains a mystery. My hunch is that Trump didn’t play much of a role in the nuts and bolts of such an agreement.

Still, it happened on his watch. Now it’s up to Mexico to deliver on its pledge to act more proactively and aggressively to stop the flow of illegal migrants through its country and into this one.

business news, International news

Stop the presses! Trump suspends tariff!

It’s nice to be able to say something positive emanating from the Donald Trump administration.

The president has announced a suspension of scheduled tariffs on all goods coming from Mexico, which was supposed to take effect on Monday.

Trump said he would impose a 5 percent tariff on those imported products, which in reality is a tax on American consumers, unless Mexico took action to stem illegal migration from Mexico to the United States.

Well, Mexico and the United States have reached an agreement, the details of which will be revealed shortly.

No tariff, said the president. That is good news! I am glad to share it.

According to PBS: A tax on all Mexican goods , which would increase every month up to 25% under Trump’s plan, would have had enormous economic implications for both countries. Americans bought $378 billion worth of Mexican imports last year, led by cars and auto parts. Many members of Trump’s Republican Party and business allies have urged him to reconsider — or at least postpone actually implementing the tariffs as talks continue — citing the potential harm to American consumers and manufacturers.

The impact on the tariff would have a profoundly detrimental effect on Texas, which conducts an enormous cross-border trade with Mexico. Texas farmers were upset with the proposed tariffs. So were the state’s two Republican U.S. senators, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz.

The Trump administration sought to pressure Mexico to do more to stem the flow of migrants coming through that country into our country. I don’t know what Mexico has agreed to do. I hope it passes muster. I also hope it works.

Tariffs on Mexican goods inflicts far more harm within our borders than it does in Mexico.

national news

Party of Lincoln, then of Reagan, now of Trump

The Party of Lincoln morphed over time into the Party of Reagan.

Now it has become the Party of Trump.

The first men, Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan, both defined Republicanism to conform to the spirit of their respective times. President Lincoln sought the party to become a more inclusive body and he fought to preserve the Union. President Reagan instituted a contemporary form of conservatism, one that saw government as part of the problem that afflicted the nation.

Donald Trump? Well, he has taken it somewhere else altogether. It’s an angry political party. He calls himself a “populist,” but flaunts a garish, glitzy lifestyle every weekend he jets off to Mar-a-Lago or to Bedminster. He panders to the religious right while having to live down a past of philandering and obscene behavior.

Now he has gone against traditional Republican policy favoring free trade to something called “fair trade.” He has imposed punishing tariffs on imported goods, prompting our international trading partners to respond with tariffs of their own on goods they import from the United States.

American farmers are getting pounded.

Congressional Republicans, particularly in the Senate, are incensed with the president’s punishing policies. The GOP is at war with itself. House members are backing Trump, seemingly out of some kind of fear that he’ll strike back at them. Senators aren’t so reticent, to which I say, “Good on ya.”

Donald Trump is not your “normal” Republican. I will continue to declare that he is not a Republican at all. He stands only for himself. He demands credit he doesn’t deserve and pushes aside blame that he does deserve.

The president has redefined every parameter one can imagine. His followers say that’s a good thing. The rest of us just shake our heads.

Politico has posted a story on the GOP divide. You can read it here. It will open your eyes.