“The first time he was president, Trump raised tariffs on steel. That helped American steelmakers. They hired 1,000 more workers. Yippee.
But more American companies make things out of steel. They were hurt. The result: America lost about 75,000 jobs.”
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“American industrial output is near an all-time high.
Unemployment, now at 4.2 percent, is much lower than it was when I grew up.
Politicians never learn. In 1930, at the start of what became the Great Depression, clueless legislators Reed Smoot and Willis Hawley got Congress to pass what became known as the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act.
“It deepened and lengthened the Depression,” writes the Foundation for Economic Education”
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“Trump says he’s making deals! He got China to reduce tariffs to 10 percent.
But China charged 8 percent before Trump raised tariffs during his first term.”
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“Some countries, in response to Trump’s moves, raised their tariffs. Canada announced retaliatory tariffs on $107 billion worth of U.S. goods.”
“the deal is a tidy illustration of how President Donald Trump has conducted his global trade war. With China, Trump hiked tariffs to astronomical levels while promising those taxes (which are paid by Americans) would unleash prosperity and create jobs. Then, the White House celebrated the agreement that reduced those tariffs as “the art of the deal.” They are literally doing the meme.
But the “deal” means that imports from China will be subjected to significantly higher tariffs than when Trump took office. Those tariffs will continue to be a serious economic burden for American businesses and consumers, and the threat of even higher tariffs remains—because the “deal” only pauses those tariffs for 90 days, and because Trump’s mercurial nature means no one can really be sure what is coming next.”
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“the remaining 30 percent tariff, which is stacked on top of preexisting tariffs from Trump’s first term, “will still make for an expensive back to school and holiday season for most Americans,” Lamar said in a statement. “If freight rates spike due to the tariff-induced shipping disruptions—which will take months to unwind—we could see costs and prices creep up even further.””
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“both America and China are still worse off than they were a few months ago. Trump has used constitutionally dubious economic powers to raise and then lower tariffs, creating huge costs and even greater uncertainty.
Rather than praising the president for backing down from an insane position, as the White House believes Americans should do, the proper response to Trump’s latest tariff maneuvers is the same as it has always been: Congress must take away his tariff powers.”
“Donald Trump’s team cuts tariffs to 30 percent, while China slashes its levies to 10 percent. Now they have 90 days to do a deal.”
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“The de-escalation does not affect tariffs ranging up to 25 percent that Trump imposed on more than $300 billion worth of Chinese goods during his first term, leaving a wide range of goods with effective tariff rates of either 37.5 percent or 55 percent.”
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“It also does not roll back the 25 percent “sectoral” tariffs that Trump has imposed on autos, steel and aluminum, U.S. officials said. Some other tariff increases that President Joe Biden imposed, such as on electric vehicles, also are not affected.”
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“In a separate interview on CNBC, Bessent said the two sides may use the “Phase 1” trade deal that Trump negotiated during his first term as the “starting point” for negotiations. That pact called on China to buy an additional $200 billion worth of Chinese goods in 2020 and 2021, but Beijing fell well short of the goal.”
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“The remaining 30 percent tariff on Chinese goods from Trump’s second term reflects a 10 percent “reciprocal” baseline tariff that Trump imposed on all countries on April 2 and a 20 percent tariff that he imposed earlier this year to pressure China to do more to stop the flow of precursor chemicals that are used to make fentanyl.”
“As a legal matter, President Donald Trump’s trade war rests on the claim that imports to the United States constitute an “unusual and extraordinary” threat requiring urgent executive action.
That’s an absurd argument, of course. The fact that Americans choose to buy or sell goods across international borders is not an emergency—it’s not even a minor worry—and certainly should not justify a massive expansion of executive power.
But Trump is going to do whatever he wants until someone stops him. On Wednesday, the Senate had a chance to do that. Instead, Republicans voted overwhelmingly to keep the “emergency” going, and thus to keep the trade war going too.
The Senate voted 49–49 on Wednesday evening to block Sen. Rand Paul’s (R–Ky.) resolution that sought to end the emergency declaration Trump signed on April 2 to impose his so-called “Liberation Day” tariffs on nearly all imports to the United States.”
“Tariffs on movies produced overseas might drive Hollywood to film more intensively in the United States, but it also makes it more difficult and expensive for American audiences to see movies made by foreign companies. Films from South Korea, India, Europe, and elsewhere compete with the U.S. film industry in terms of culture, ideas, and sometimes politics. Tariffs on overseas productions could effectively trap us with the products of Hollywood and reduce its need to adjust to the tastes of the viewing public.”
Republicans and Democrats are hurtling the U.S. toward a debt crisis. The trade deficit cannot be fixed by bullying foreign countries. To fix the country’s economic woes, the U.S. needs to lower spending to reduce or eliminate the budget deficit. The U.S. depends on the world to buy U.S. debt. If they buy less, interest rates will destroy the U.S. economy. The U.S. needs to fix the budget deficit to prevent this.
China’s electric car industry was built on a battery developed in the U.S., but the U.S. didn’t consistently support electric vehicles, and China did, so the Chinese built a massive industry off of it instead of the Americans.