“”Americans are continuing to leave high-tax, high-cost-of-living states in favor of lower-tax, lower-cost alternatives. Of the 26 states whose overall state and local tax burdens per capita were below the national average in 2022 (the most recent year of data available), 18 experienced net inbound interstate migration in FY 2024,” Katherine Loughead wrote last week for the Tax Foundation. “Meanwhile, of the 25 states and DC with tax burdens per capita at or above the national average, 17 of those jurisdictions experienced net outbound domestic migration.””
‘Trump’s tariffs are short term pain for long term pain.
Tariffs will raise the price of the dollar, making U.S. exports more expensive. Other countries retaliate, making U.S. products more expensive. Raising the costs of inputs for U.S. outputs makes American products more expensive. This all hurts exports. These tariffs aren’t an export strategy, they are a self-reliance strategy, and self-reliance means a much smaller economy.’
“Tariffs on Chinese goods like manufactured parts and chips “are going to make the production process more complicated and more expensive,” said economist Christopher Thornberg with Beacon Economics.
Thornberg said California companies that rely on those materials like Apple and Nvidia, which makes highly sought-after chips essential for training AI programs, will be able to absorb the costs “because of the mountain of profits they are sitting on.”
The longer the trade spat goes on, though, the more likely knock-on effects like higher consumer prices, but also bites out of the budget, become as companies absorb increased costs.”
“The trade deficit is huge. It stands at $235.6 billion — a 12.9 percent increase since 2023. EU countries impose an average 5 percent tariff on U.S. goods, while the U.S. imposes an average 3.3 percent tariff on European goods. Even worse, the EU collects a 10 percent tariff on car imports — that’s four times America’s 2.5 percent.”
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“This has to change — and it can — but not through a tit-for-tat race to higher tariffs. Rather, we need to lower tariffs and observe symmetry. Ideally, EU-U.S. trade would be tariff-free. However, if that’s unachievable, tariffs should be, on average, 2 percent on both sides. That would create a huge stimulus for both economies, and it could be the basis and precondition for what is existentially necessary: a common trade strategy on China.”
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“If Trump is serious about “America First,” there’s one thing he should come to terms with — it shouldn’t mean “America Alone.” More leverage at the negotiating table with China, a healthy U.S. economy without inflation, and a prosperous Germany that could turn around a stumbling EU would be in the interest of the American people and Europe.”
“Following swift market backlash, Trump on Wednesday announced a one-month reprieve for autos and auto parts from the sweeping 25 percent tariffs he levied one day earlier. In doing so, he signaled an openness to hearing appeals from other industries for additional exemptions to the Mexico and Canada tariffs. It’s a stark contrast to the approach he is taking with the American people, whom he is asking to shoulder the risk of higher prices as a result of the tariffs, in exchange for the promise of longer-term economic benefit.
“I don’t know what the administration’s plan is,” said Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.). “If they’re using [tariffs] as leverage, seems to me it would be better to threaten them, negotiate and you put them on or not on.”
Together, the conflicting actions reflect the president’s dual impulses: longstanding sensitivity to stock market fluctuations — which he has long read as Nielsen ratings for his performance — and a love of tariffs as a primary instrument to get what he wants from foreign governments.
That tension is also reflected within Trump’s circle of advisers, who spent much of Wednesday debating whether and how far to mitigate the impacts of a trade war on American industries and consumers.
“It’s the greatest show on Earth. We’ll put tariffs on tonight, but tomorrow we’ll tell you we may negotiate and take them off,” a person close to the administration, granted anonymity to discuss internal conversations, told POLITICO. “But stay tuned, because you never know what tomorrow’s gonna bring.”
The self-inflicted economic uncertainty comes as Americans remain concerned about high prices, with polling showing that people don’t think the administration is doing enough to address the economy even as they are pleased with its performance on other issues. It also comes amid growing frustration on Capitol Hill, particularly among Republican senators from farm states, who fear the ripple effects from the tariffs on their local economies.
And it’s adding to confusion about whether the new tariffs on Canada and Mexico are truly aimed only at stemming the tide of fentanyl flowing across the U.S. border — a message Trump’s lieutenants have underscored far more firmly than the president himself — or reflective of the administration’s broader protectionist goals. The new tariffs, after all, are only a prelude to the more sweeping reciprocal tariffs the president has promised will take effect April 2 — and it’s unclear even to many of the president’s close allies what actions Canada and Mexico could take at this point to lift the tariffs entirely.”
“Part of his administration’s solution to the high price of eggs? More imports. As part of a $1 billion plan to combat the bird flu, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced..that it would seek to expand imports of eggs”
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“A sudden constraint on supply—in this case, the bird flu—has pushed prices higher, and finding alternative suppliers might help ease the pain.
Now, someone in the White House might want to apply that same analysis to Trump’s plan for more tariffs on two of America’s biggest food suppliers.
Trump backed down from his threats to slap 25 percent tariffs on all imports from Canada and Mexico earlier this month, but at the time, he said those tariffs were merely delayed by 30 days.”
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“Canada and Mexico accounted for 28 percent of all imports to the U.S. last year. If the costs of Trump’s tariffs are fully passed down the supply chain, consumers could be facing $225 billion in higher costs, according to an estimate by the American Action Forum (AAF). The energy and manufacturing sectors figure to be the hardest hit, thanks to the deeply integrated North American supply chains for products ranging from crude oil to critical minerals like cobalt and zinc.
Food prices would likely rise too. The U.S. imports more food than ever before, Bloomberg noted this week, and many of those imports come from America’s two neighbors. Mexico is America’s largest source of agricultural imports, according to the USDA. That includes 63 percent of U.S. vegetable imports and 47 percent of U.S. fruit and nut imports. All of that would be affected by the new tariffs.”
“President Donald Trump pledged Thursday to enforce his planned 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico starting March 4, after both were put on pause earlier this month.
“We cannot allow this scourge [of drugs] to continue to harm the USA, and therefore, until it stops, or is seriously limited, the proposed TARIFFS scheduled to go into effect on MARCH FOURTH will, indeed, go into effect, as scheduled,” Trump posted to Truth Social on Thursday morning.
Trump also promised to levy an additional 10 percent tariff on China starting the same date.”
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“Trump has already imposed 10 percent tariffs on China after the leaders were unable to stave off a deadline earlier this month”
“Trump’s new budget blueprint, which is also known as a resolution, does three things.
First, it calls for extending the president’s 2017 tax cuts, which would otherwise expire at the end of the year, at a cost of $4 trillion over the next decade. It also makes room for another $500 billion in tax cuts Trump talked about on the campaign trail, such as no tax on tips, for a grand total of $4.5 trillion.
Second, the blueprint greenlights modest spending increases targeted toward immigration enforcement (up to $110 billion), customs and border protection (up to $90 billion) and military involvement in border security (up to $100 million) — top Trump priorities.
And finally, at the behest of conservative deficit hawks, the resolution mandates $2 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years to partially offset new border spending and the trillions in revenue lost to Trump’s tax cuts. (Even then, the new budget would still directly add $2.8 trillion to the deficit.)
For now, Trump’s budget blueprint doesn’t say which programs will be slashed; instead, it instructs specific House committees to cut specific amounts from the programs under their jurisdiction.”