Tag: United States

International travel is declining, and it’s costing the US: ‘It’s shaking everything up’

Posted on by Lone Candle

“Amid recent travel advisories warning those coming to the U.S. plus strengthened immigration enforcement, many international travelers are starting to turn away from the U.S. as a destination. Between January and March 2025, foreign arrivals dropped by around 4.4% from those first three months last year, according to data from the National Travel and Tourism Office. In a March year-over-year comparison, that reduction doubles to almost 10%.”

…

“Some fear for their safety over what could happen when trying to enter the nation’s borders. Others are angered at recent policies, like the trade wars, and rhetoric, refusing to spend their dollars in the U.S. A decline in overseas visitors could have significant long-term consequences for the economy, with travel and tourism one of the country’s leading industries, contributing 2.5% to the GDP”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/international-travel-declining-costing-us-090543078.html

EU takes revenge on Trump’s tariffs as countries approve €20B+ retaliation

Posted on by Lone Candle

“The EU can apply retaliatory tariffs on nearly €21 billion of U.S. products like soybeans, motorcycles and orange juice after the bloc’s 27 countries assented to the measures on Wednesday, the European Commission announced.

“The EU considers U.S. tariffs unjustified and damaging, causing economic harm to both sides, as well as the global economy. The EU has stated its clear preference to find negotiated outcomes with the U.S., which would be balanced and mutually beneficial,” the EU executive said in a statement.

Hitting back against U.S. President Donald Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs, the European Union’s countermeasures will apply in three rounds. Measures covering €3.9 billion in trade will go into force next week, with a further €13.5 billion from mid-May and a final round of €3.5 billion following in December.”

https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-takes-revenge-on-trumps-metals-tariffs-approved-as-countries-close-ranks/

San Antonio’s mayor worked to build a strong relationship with Canada. Tariffs would decimate its economy.

Posted on by Lone Candle

“San Antonio sends almost half its exports to Canada, which makes the Texas trade hub one of the most vulnerable U.S. cities in the tariff war.
Mayor Ron Nirenberg says one in five jobs in his state is exposed by President Donald Trump’s new tariff regime — “300,000 jobs immediately on the block.””

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/09/san-antonio-mayor-canada-tariffs-00280571

Trump Is Wrong About McKinley’s Tariff Legacy

Posted on by Lone Candle

“As a congressman, he wrote what came to be known as the “McKinley tariff” of 1890, and as president he signed another increase in 1897.

But a funny thing happened after the U.S. came out of the Panic (and subsequent four-year depression) of 1893: Goosed by sharp increases in domestic iron and copper production, Americans had too many goods chasing too few consumers. And McKinley himself began agitating to tear down some of those trade barriers.

“What we produce beyond our domestic consumption must have a vent abroad,” he said in September 1901 at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. “The excess must be relieved through a foreign outlet, and we should sell everywhere we can, and buy wherever the buying will enlarge our sales and productions, and thereby make a greater demand for home labor. The period of exclusiveness is past,” he continued. “The expansion of our trade and commerce is the pressing problem. Commercial wars are unprofitable….If perchance some of our tariffs are no longer needed, for revenue or to encourage and protect our industries at home, why should they not be employed to extend and promote our markets abroad?”

McKinley’s presidency was ended by an assassin’s bullet the very next day.

Even before his late-life pivot to freer trade, McKinley had long been a champion of reciprocity, i.e., the bilateral, mutually beneficial reduction of targeted, asymmetrical tariffs. Or, as he put it in his first inaugural address, “the opening up of new markets for the products of our country, by granting concessions to the products of other lands that we need and cannot produce ourselves, and which do not involve any loss of labor to our own people, but tend to increase their employment.”

In his second term, Trump has demonstrated less enthusiasm for reciprocity than he has for the other two Rs of traditional protectionism, revenue and restriction. Asked last October by Joe Rogan whether he was serious about replacing the federal income tax with tariffs, Trump said, “Yeah, sure. Why not?”—and then engaged in some historical revisionism.”

…

“the tariff system and perennial adjustments thereof was a cornucopia of corruption, putting the gilded in Gilded Age. Far from being a sophisticated manipulation of import/export duties to nurture nascent industries, the tariff schedule was a Christmas tree decorated by special interests.”

https://reason.com/2025/04/06/trump-is-wrong-about-mckinleys-tariff-legacy/

Canada to retaliate against Trump with tariffs on US autos

Posted on by Lone Candle

“Prime Minister Mark Carney said Canada will impose “carefully calibrated and targeted counter tariffs” on the United States in response to President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs.

Carney said Canada will counter with 25 percent tariffs on all vehicles imported from the United States that are not compliant with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement and on the non-Canadian content of USMCA-compliant vehicles from the United States.

But Carney said that unlike Trump’s tariffs, Canada’s countermeasures will not affect auto parts “because we know the benefits of our integrated production system.” All other previously announced Canadian countermeasures to Trump’s previous threats will remain, Carney said.

Carney said Trump’s global reciprocal tariffs have ended 80 years of American global economic leadership that started after World War II.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/03/canada-auto-tariffs-00269041

Why Economic Sanctions Against Iran Are Backfiring

Posted on by Lone Candle

“Although the United States has the power to seriously disrupt economic life in other countries, the book argues, the consequences don’t always serve American interests. Sanctions hurt the prosperity and political standing of Iran’s pro-American middle class the most. They also make the government more paranoid and remove important incentives to play nice. Everyone seems worse off.

The U.S. has tried to wash its hands of the policy’s consequences for ordinary Iranians, blaming their poverty on domestic “corruption and economic mismanagement” rather than on sanctions. But the data are clear. The Iranian economy was booming from 1988, the end of the country’s war with Iraq, to 2011, the beginning of former President Barack Obama’s intensified sanctions campaign.

Obama’s innovation was secondary sanctions. As the flow of direct American-Iranian trade shrunk, the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control punished companies in other countries that dealt with Iran. The Iranian economy became more or less radioactive, as any bank in the world that handled Iranian money and any shipping company that handled Iranian oil risked the wrath of the U.S. government.

Then Obama made a deal, lifting the sanctions in 2015 in exchange for restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program. Trade resumed and foreign investment flowed back in—until Trump reimposed sanctions in 2018. (Despite Trump’s claims to the contrary, former President Joe Biden continued to enforce the same sanctions.) Iran has since come closer to building a nuclear bomb, and it has had more confrontations with the U.S. military.”

https://reason.com/2025/03/27/how-sanctions-backfire/