A Brief Overview of What Trump's Tariffs Have Wrought

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Trump has long felt the United States is getting ripped off when it comes to trade. He’s lamented it at campaign rallies, he’s tweeted about it repeatedly and this year he finally decided to do something about it. It’s a simple fix, Trump reasoned: Just tax the hell out of America’s biggest trade partners. “When a country (USA) is losing many billions of dollars on trade with virtually every country it does business with, trade wars are good, and easy to win,” Trump’s tweeted in March after imposing tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum. “Example, when we are down $100 billion with a certain country and they get cute, don’t trade anymore-we win big. It’s easy!”

Link to tweet

It hasn’t been so easy. To the president’s chagrin, the nations he’s trying to punish haven’t bent to his will. Instead, they’re imposing retaliatory tariffs on a number of goods central to the U.S. economy. Trump has responded the only way he knows how: by doubling down with even more tariffs. As a result, American companies have been forced to raise prices, move production overseas, lay off some or all of their employees or even close down production entirely. Last week, TV manufacturer Element Electronics announced it was shuttering its plant in Fairfield County, South Carolina, in response to Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. Element was one of Fairfield County’s largest employers. Now it’s gone, as are the jobs of 126 South Carolinians. “The layoff and closure is a result of the new tariffs that were recently and unexpectedly imposed on many goods imported from China, including the key television components used in our assembly operations,” the company wrote in a letter to South Carolina’s employment department.

Element is only one of several companies across a number of industries that have been devastated by the wide-ranging fallout of Trump’s trade wars. Here are some of the ways others are suffering.

MANUFACTURING

In March, Trump imposed a 25 percent tariff on imported steel and a 10 percent tariff on imported aluminum, providing exemptions to allies like Canada, Mexico and the European Union. Two months later, he scrapped those exemptions, dealing a blow to pretty much every American company that manufactures products made from steel or aluminum. As it turns out, there are quite a few of them.

Mid-Continental Nail, the nation’s largest nail manufacturer, was devastated when Trump lifted the tariff exemption for Canada, Mexico and the EU in May. The company relied on steel imported from Mexico, and was forced to raise prices after the tariff was imposed. This pushed orders down, and on June 15th, the Poplar Bluff, Missouri, company laid off 60 employees, warning that the entire company could be out of business by Labor Day. “It’s time to end this reckless trade war that has put so many Missourians’ livelihoods at stake — we’ve already seen 60 jobs lost here in Poplar Bluff, and without any action by the administration, we’ll lose hundreds more,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) after touring the company’s plant June. “This is a trade war that’s damaging important alliances around the globe, harming so many downstream jobs across the country, and threatening the workers I visited with today, when we should instead be focusing our resources on going after cheating by China in a surgical manner, rather than the current sledgehammer approach.”

The tariffs have discouraged buying American in the case of American Keg, the only stainless steel beer keg manufacturer in the United States. The Pottstown, Pennsylvania, company — which in March was forced to lay off 10 of its 30 employees — uses U.S. steel, the price of which has risen as a result of the tariffs, forcing the company to raise the price of its kegs, leading consumers to turn to overseas vendors. “We have a lot of patriotic customers that want to buy USA made kegs with U.S. labor and U.S. steel but they’re only going to go so far as that price difference continues to rise,” CEO Paul Czachor told Marketplace.

Brinley-Hardy, an Indiana-based lawn care equipment company, was forced to lay off 75 employees this summer as a result of the tariffs. Like American Keg, Brinley-Hardy used only U.S. steel in its products, but the tariffs have caused steel prices to rise 33 percent since the beginning of the year. “We are collateral damage in this effort. We’re going to be in the same situation as the farmers of needing to save U.S. manufacturing, the company’s owner, Jane Hardy, told the Washington Post, referencing the administration’s recent $12 billion bailout of the crippled agriculture industry.

-more-

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-tariff-effects-708376/

[SWBTATTReg]

1. Thanks for your post...Harley Davidson also is one manufacturer impacted too, and I'm ...

sure that there are more out there. Think of the hidden tax that we're paying already now...the $12 billion being paid to farmers that if rump left everything alone, wouldn't have to be paid. Each and every single event such as this migrates to every part of the economy and impacts all of us, not just the farmers.

What really gets me is that rump is still hiring foreign workers (vs. Americans) and still importing stuff from China and the like, for resale here.

Hypocrites...

[GeorgeGist]

2. First of all ...

Trump and his klan don't know that his tariffs are taxes on Americans.

[gratuitous]

3. So easy to win trade wars

This nincompoop thinks it's like his business dealings. If there's a caterer who won't accede to his every contradictory whim and do it for a money-losing price, there's another caterer who will. For the prestige of catering a Trump event.

But that's not the way it works in the community of nations. You can't bully your way to winning (however that's defined) by threatening to take your business elsewhere. There isn't another China or Canada or Germany in the next block that will do business with the U.S. for the sake of doing business with the U.S.

We'll see how long the battering of U.S. industry and U.S. consumers goes on until Trump quietly abandons this stupid policy, declares victory, and brags his way to another dubious achievement.

[Wellstone ruled]

4. If it is so easy to win trade wars ,why did

GM loose 28% of it's market value since July 1. And why did Ford Motor loose 29% of it's market value during the same time period.

The Easy answer is,stupid Tariff's. Does one really think the China Auto Buyers are going to pay a extra 15-25% more for our product.

Again,you can not fix the STUPID. Just a matter of weeks and we will see the lay offs. Just heard Electrolux is bailing out of St Cloud Minnesota.

[TlalocW]

5. I think it was posted here

But there was a great analysis of Trump when it comes to these dealings, and it's essentially he can not see any situation as a win-win - there has to be a winner, and there as to be a loser - or more exact, the guy running the con and the conned. I can't remember what it was, but Trump made a somewhat reasonable offer to democrats on something, and democrats were going to say yes, and then Trump rescinded the offer most likely because he needed to figure out how he was "getting conned" since the democrats seemed relatively happy with the offer he made them when he thought that they shouldn't.

TlalocW