Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
Trump’s EU trade deal is only a win if a 15% tax on imports from Europe is a win. Things from Europe being more expensive, and importing companies making less money, are bad for the economy and the people in it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6htfcWxknU
“in fairness, tariff-free trade into Vietnam is good news for American farmers and manufacturers that export goods to that country, as Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has argued. And the reduction in tariffs may marginally increase our exports to Vietnam.
For the vast majority of Americans, however, trade with Vietnam matters on the buying side, not the selling side. For them, this deal accomplishes very little.
The deal also sends a clear signal to other countries that Trump’s promise of reciprocity was bullshit.
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Free trade between the U.S. and Vietnam would be a win-win for both countries. That’s not what Trump has delivered with this deal. Vietnamese businesses and consumers got free trade. Americans got more taxes.”
https://reason.com/2025/07/03/trumps-new-trade-deal-has-a-clear-winner-vietnam/
Two percent of working Americans get tips. If you are a waiter who gets tips, you get a tax cut, but if you are a dishwasher who doesn’t get tips, you don’t get a tax cut. If you are getting tips and stay within the bill’s 25k limit, you aren’t paying much taxes to begin with.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNjSrXnMY4Y
“If Trump’s goal here is to strike deals that will lower foreign barriers to American exports and deliver better trading conditions for American manufacturers (who rely on imports), then hiking tariffs on South Korea makes startlingly little sense.”
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“the new tariffs seem to violate an existing trade deal between the U.S. and South Korea. That deal, the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement, was signed in 2007 by President George W. Bush and implemented in 2012. Under the terms of the deal, about 95 percent of the goods traded between the two countries are imported tariff-free. Among other things, that deal put an end to high South Korean tariffs on American cars and light trucks, which has boosted American exports and U.S. auto manufacturing jobs.
On the whole, the deal has been good for both countries. Bilateral trade between the U.S. and South Korea expanded nearly 70 percent in the first 10 years that the deal was in place. As the Heritage Foundation noted in 2022, the deal was particularly good for American farmers (who saw exports to South Korea hit record highs) and for foreign investment in American industries (South Korean investment in the U.S. nearly tripled during the deal’s first decade in force).”
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“Trump himself signed a renegotiated version of that same trade deal in 2018. The so-called KORUS 2.0 rolled back some of the free trade provisions in the original deal—most notably, it limited exports of Korean steel to the U.S. and postponed a planned elimination of the U.S. tariff on imported light trucks.
Still, it was mostly “a minor tweak” to the previous deal, as the Cato Institute termed it at the time.
Trump called the reworked deal “fair and reciprocal” and said it was “a historic milestone in trade.”
Now, less than seven years later, he’s effectively torn up that deal. Or he’s pretending that it never existed (or he forgot about it).
So, here’s the question: What is the White House hoping to accomplish with this latest maneuver?
If the goal is to lower tariffs across the board, then KORUS already did that. If the goal is to increase American exports to foreign countries by getting them to lower their trade barriers, then KORUS has already done that too. If the goal is to allow Trump to renegotiate the supposedly flawed trade deals from previous generations of American leaders, then KORUS 2.0 did that.
And, of course, if the goal is to strike more deals with more countries—as the White House keeps claiming—then this seems to be a step in the wrong direction. What other leader will be willing to negotiate seriously with this administration, knowing full well that it does not respect the deals it reaches?”
https://reason.com/2025/07/07/with-new-25-percent-tariffs-trump-just-blew-up-his-own-trade-deal-with-south-korea/
“In 2023, the most recent year for which full data are available, the average U.S. tariff on British goods was 3.3 percent.
That means this “deal” charges American consumers a 10 percent baseline tax on goods that were previously taxed at 3.3 percent. That’s not a win for free trade or lower prices.”
https://reason.com/2025/05/09/the-u-k-trade-deal-screws-american-consumers/
“the U.K. became the first new member to join the tongue-twisting Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) since it was formed in 2018.
It’s also the first country that doesn’t at least have a coast fronting the region.”
https://www.politico.eu/article/britains-bold-new-world-as-a-pacific-trading-nation/
“”I don’t think we’re going to see a deal like we saw in the first term,” Robert O’Brien, Trump’s fourth and final national security advisor, told Chalfant. “I think people were generally happy with [the previous deal], but as it turned out, the Chinese didn’t honor it.””
https://reason.com/2024/06/19/trump-advisor-admits-trade-war-against-china-failed/
“The so-called “phase one” trade deal inked in December 2019 by former President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping might have put an end to the spiraling trade war between the two countries, but the agreement did not result in China buying more American goods, as both leaders promised it would. In fact, during the two years covered by the deal, China imported fewer American goods than before the trade war began—meaning that the deal did not even succeed at patching up the damage caused by Trump’s bellicose trade policies.”
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“We now know that the promised benefits did not materialize. But the costs certainly keep adding up. Auto manufacturers, for example, shifted supply chains to avoid the cost of tariffs and economic uncertainty created by the trade war—by relocating some American manufacturing jobs to China, which has become a large and growing market for auto sales. BMW, for example, shifted much of the production of its X3 sport-utility vehicle from Spartanburg, South Carolina, to China after reporting that tariffs had cut the company’s American profits by about $338 million in 2018. The higher costs imposed by the trade war caused Tesla to announce that it was “accelerating construction” of a new plant in Shanghai.
Overall, Bown estimates, exports to China would have been $26 billion higher in 2020 and $39 billion higher in 2021 if not for the impact of the trade war and subsequent trade deal. That doesn’t account for other losses sustained during the trade war, like the increased farm subsidies paid for by American taxpayers and the run-of-the-mill cost increases created by tariffs.
Aside from some positive developments with regard to China’s treatment of intellectual property and financial services, probably the only good thing about Trump’s “phase one” trade deal is that it has now expired.
“President Trump’s trade war and phase one agreement did little to change China’s economic policymaking,” Bown concludes. “Beijing seems intent on becoming more state-centered and less market oriented.””
“The United States Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA) is an updated version of the nearly 25-year-old, trillion-dollar North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). It includes major changes on cars and new policies on labor and environmental standards, intellectual property protections, and some digital trade provisions.”
“According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, inflation-adjusted median weekly earnings for American workers have increased by 17 percent since 1995, when the WTO was founded. Meanwhile, American manufacturing has never been more valuable than it is now, as the country’s industrial production last year was 48 percent higher than in 1995, according to the Federal Reserve.”
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“Withdrawing from the WTO would leave America cut off from the lower tariff rates that member nations grant to one another, effectively raising barriers to American exports and harming American manufacturing and farming. The global trade that’s possible because of America’s membership in the WTO boosts the U.S. economy by $2.1 trillion every year”
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“the WTO did not simply materialize in the mid-1990s nor can it be easily replaced. It was the result of a decadeslong experiment in expanding the economic co-dependence of the world’s largest economies. That experiment increased prosperity and reduce major wars across the planet.”