Tag: foreign affairs

“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.”

https://reason.com/2025/02/28/tariffs-on-imports-from-canada-and-mexico-are-still-a-terrible-idea/