Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
“Canadian travel to the United States by car has declined for seven consecutive months.
Canadians have said they are boycotting travel to the United States in response to Trump’s policies.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/data-many-canadians-still-avoiding-003056944.html
“President Donald Trump and his allies have spent months promising that higher tariffs will usher in a “golden age” of wealth and prosperity for America.
Now, the administration and one of its biggest allies in Congress are pushing for a new round of stimulus checks seemingly aimed at easing the economic pain caused by…yes, those same tariff policies.
…
The proposal to send out tariff-funded stimulus checks should at least put an end to two of the more nonsensical claims that the president and his pro-tariff allies have been making. First, this should confirm that Americans—not foreign governments or corporations—are footing the bill for the tariffs.
Second, the idea that tariffs can be used to close the budget deficit should be similarly put to bed. Some estimates suggest that tariffs are likely to widen the deficit (even without any stimulus checks being mailed out), as they will slow economic growth and reduce future tax revenue. Even if you ignore those dynamic projections, there’s a big problem: The $150 billion in tariff revenue collected so far this year can’t be used to pay down the budget deficit if it is first going to be redistributed to Americans in the form of rebate checks.
…
If Trump and Hawley want to spare Americans the pain caused by tariffs, there is a much simpler solution here: Get rid of the tariffs.”
https://reason.com/2025/08/11/tariff-rebate-checks-are-a-bad-inflationary-idea/
“Inflation accelerated again last month with global trade turmoil exacting a toll on consumer prices.
The Consumer Price Index rose 2.7% over the prior year in July, and 0.2% from June.
Airfares, used cars, and shelter costs all marched higher, while food prices held fairly steady. (Except for coffee — the morning staple continues to see steep price hikes.)”
https://finance.yahoo.com/personal-finance/banking/article/july-cpi-breakdown-consumers-feel-the-crunch-of-accelerating-inflation-181129643.html
“Vivergo’s plant is now at risk of closure due to the U.K.-U.S. trade deal, which allows 1.4 billion liters of tariff-free American ethanol into the British market. It’s a volume Vivergo’s managing director Ben Hackett says is equivalent to the entire U.K. bioethanol market.
Unless ministers intervene, 160 staff at Vivergo — one of only two major bioethanol producers in the U.K. — will lose their jobs from Aug. 18. Thousands more in farming and haulage will also feel the impact.”
https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-trade-deal-us-uk-wheat-farming-ethanol-market/
“Big American companies are also reporting growing tariff expenses.
Ford said last week it paid $800 million in tariffs in the second quarter and could shell out as much as $3 billion this year. General Motors reported a $1.1 billion tariff hit in the second quarter and said trade friction could cost the automaker $4 billion to $5 billion in 2025.
Heavy equipment manufacturer Caterpillar warned this week that rising tariffs could cost it $1.5 billion this year. And Apple CEO Tim Cook – who was at the White House on Wednesday to announce an additional $100 billion investment in the U.S. — said the company paid $800 million in tariffs in its most recent quarter and faced another $1.1 billion this quarter.
The White House has pointed to the more than $136 billion it has already collected in tariff revenue, as well as agreements from a number of trading partners to lower tariff barriers and invest billions in the U.S., as a sign that Trump’s approach is working.
However, nearly seven months after he took office, there has been no uptick in manufacturing employment, which remains flat at 12.7 million workers. The increased tariff revenue also amounts to slightly more than 7 percent of the $1.9 trillion federal government budget deficit projected in fiscal 2025.
A survey released this week by the National Foreign Trade Council, a business group, found that companies have been increasingly forced to delay or reduce their product and service offerings due to rising costs and sourcing challenges.
The administration has also shown little sympathy for companies complaining of higher tariff costs and supply chain disruptions.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/07/trumps-trade-escalates-global-tariffs-kick-in-00496457
Britain is having economic problems due to a variety of bad policies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2g2NVzt3-2U
The U.S. created a world based on relatively free trade. Most benefited from it. Now Trump is pulling us back from that world, and most people, including most Americans, will be hurt by that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4wiPYWVV_4
“With a series of short-sighted tariff maneuvers, the president has effectively told Toyota (and other Japanese carmakers) that it should do more of its manufacturing in Japan and stop trying to create jobs in America.
Earlier this week, President Donald Trump announced a new trade deal with Japan that will include a 15 percent tariff on Japanese goods, including imported cars. The details of the deal remain somewhat vague, but that’s a significant discount compared to the 25 percent tariff the administration has imposed on cars imported from everywhere else.
The reduced tariffs for Japanese cars are significant because of how that provision interacts with the Trump administration’s other trade policies that are aimed at making it more expensive to manufacture cars in the United States. The president has imposed a 50 percent tariff on steel and aluminum (both of which are essential for automakers) and has slapped a 25 percent tariff on imported cars and car parts. Those tariffs are already dinging the profits of American carmakers—General Motors reportedly lost more than $1 billion in the second quarter of the year—and auto industry experts say they will raise prices, reduce demand for new cars, and generally make American cars less globally competitive.
In short, the Trump administration is offering an incentive to import finished cars from Japan, while making it more expensive to buy the stuff you need to build cars in America.
…
Ultimately, the problem here is not the specific tariff rates the Trump administration is seeking to charge on steel, car parts, or cars imported from Japan or Mexico. (Those rates are likely to change anyway, if the past few months of the trade war are any indication.)
No, the real problem here is the Trump administration’s belief that it can use tariffs to shape the global trading system toward contradicting goals with no tradeoffs or distortions. In reality, each new tariff move causes both. The market responds to incentives, and right now, the Trump administration is creating a set of incentives that will raise costs for American manufacturers while driving investors overseas.”
https://reason.com/2025/07/25/trumps-tariffs-and-japan-deal-could-encourage-toyota-to-move-manufacturing-jobs-out-of-america/
“All taxes are paid by someone, and President Donald Trump’s tariffs are no exception to that rule. The question of who pays and in what amounts is likely to become even more of a focal point in the coming days and weeks, as the White House follows through on its threat to hit imports from dozens of countries with higher tariffs starting on August 1.
Economic data from the past few months, during which the Trump administration hiked tariffs on goods from Mexico, Canada, China, and elsewhere, provide a preview of what’s to come after the August 1 tariffs hit: Higher prices for Americans.
That is, of course, what economists say tariffs do. Raising prices is really the only function of a tariff—which artificially inflates the price of imported goods to make them less attractive than domestic alternatives. Economists will also tell you that’s not the whole story. They say that domestic producers often raise prices as well, since imported competing goods are now more expensive. They also say that tariffs on raw materials and intermediate parts—like the Trump administration’s levies on steel, aluminum, and the parts necessary to build a car—will push up the cost of building other, more complex goods, and those higher costs will be passed along to consumers in the form of higher prices.
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There have been “relatively quick price responses to tariff announcements,” report a group of economists connected to the Harvard Business School’s Pricing Lab, which tracks prices throughout the economy. In a paper updated earlier this month, the Harvard economists report that there’s been a “cumulative increase in imported goods prices since early March” of approximately 3 percent. The paper relies on data from four major U.S. retail chains.
Their data show that prices for both imported and domestic goods have climbed since Trump took office, with foreign-made goods increasing more quickly thanks to two noticeable leaps that occurred right after Trump’s tariff announcements in early March and early April.
https://reason.com/2025/07/29/yes-tariffs-are-raising-prices/
Prof G and Jessica Tarlov are big fans of Hilldog.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5dgHs_wIkE