Trump launches trade war with 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico

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Donald Trump trade war tariffs Canada Mexico

Trump launches trade war with 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico

Despite the spin coming from Con Inc. and the cult, Donald Trump’s first term in office wasn’t the economic success they claim it was, thanks mainly to the trade war hell he created by imposing massive tariffs waged against most of America’s trading partners — tariffs that he has just announced will be placed on Canada and Mexico — starting at 25 percent — beginning February 1.

Despite the failure of tariffs and the higher prices it meant for consumers, Trump still plans to do it again (via TheHill.com):

President Trump on Monday indicated his administration would impose 25 percent tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada beginning Feb. 1.

“We are thinking in terms of 25 percent on Mexico and Canada because they’re allowing vast numbers of people … to come in, and fentanyl to come in,” Trump said when asked while signing executive orders about his thought process on tariffs toward the two countries.

“I think we’ll do it Feb. 1,” he added when asked about a timeline.

The action would make good on a threat Trump first made in the final days of the 2024 campaign, when he threatened to impose a tariff of 25 percent on all imports from Mexico, which is the top trade partner with the U.S., unless the Mexican government curbed the flow of migrants at the southern border.

He later expanded that threat to include Canada and China. (Emphasis mine)

As I wrote in early December, Trump’s trade war and tariffs failed before, and they will fail again.

Trump officially launched Trade War I in January 2018 when he placed tariffs on solar panel and washing machine imports, causing significant and immediate price increases. Later, in March 2018, Trump placed across-the-board tariffs on steel and aluminum, a move directly and immediately responsible for doubling the price of steel on US manufacturers and price-gouging by steel providers.

Facing heavy backlash at the time from “conservative” Senators like Mike Lee, Trump assured America that “trade wars are good, and easy to win.” He went on to say that “the steel industry is in bad shape” even though over 70 percent of the steel used in America at the time came from America.

In late 2021, long after he was no longer in office, we learned of the devastating impact Trump’s trade war and tariffs had on consumer prices and the economy (via Reason.com):

Those tariffs … are adding roughly 0.5 percent to annual inflation across the economy. That’s the conclusion drawn by Ed Gresser, a former assistant U.S. Trade Representative who is currently the vice president and director for trade and global markets at the Progressive Policy Institute, a center-left think tank. Trump’s tariffs on washing machines, solar panels, steel, aluminum, and a host of Chinese-made goods are a “secondary but noticeable contribution” to overall inflation right now, Gresser writes.

That’s pretty much in line with what four economists at the San Francisco Federal Reserve warned in February 2019, shortly after Trump began slapping tariffs on various goods. “Imports from China are an important part of overall U.S. imports of consumer and investment goods,” they wrote. “Thus, tariffs on these imports are likely to have sizable effects on consumer, producer, and investment prices in this country.”

The one and only thing that tariffs do is raise prices. That is their only function. Politicians might want to deploy tariffs (to raise prices) for a number of reasons: to protect domestic industries, to influence where in the world individuals choose to invest, to retaliate against what they perceive as unfair trade practices from other countries, and so on. But all those goals—and tariffs are poor ways of accomplishing most of them—are second-order functions. To the extent that any of those things occur, they happen because tariffs raise prices. (Emphasis mine)

An inconvenient truth for Trumpist Republicans, Con Inc., and the cult is that the economic damage inflicted by Trump’s tariffs and trade war was evident while he was still in office, beginning at the one-year anniversary of their use.

Samsung North America CEO Tim Baxter said in a January 2019 interview with FOX Business that Trump’s tariffs had a negative impact on the prices of Samsung products.

“The industry actually ended up after the imposition of the section 201 [tariffs] about a $100 price increase on literally all laundry products. So, a category that was growing with the GDP is actually contracted in 2018.” (Emphasis mine.)

Did you notice he said that “the industry,” not just Samsung, had increased prices? Did you also notice that he said the industry “was growing” before Trump started his trade war?

According to estimates made by the National Taxpayer’s Union Foundation at the time, the total annual cost of Trump’s tariffs on consumers was $41.65 billion, an amount that exceeded the taxes Americans had paid for Obamacare ($34.6 billion).

By the time 2020 rolled around, two years of Donald Trump’s trade war had turned out just as predicted: the farm industry was decimated, manufacturing was in a recession, and 100% of the cost of tariffs had fallen directly on American businesses and consumers.

As I mentioned in the beginning of this article, many of the so-called conservative talking heads working for Con Inc. continue to parrot the hyperbolic “economic success” nonsense coming from the Trump camp:

“Trump-induced retardation” is an interesting use of words considering how Deace was adamantly opposed to Cheeto Jesus before accepting him as his economic lord and savior. But alas, Trumpism replaced conservatism over at BlazeTV much like it has the Republican Party itself.

Another economic promise made by Trump in 2016 was how his tariffs and trade wars would shrink the trade deficit, but an October 2020 Department of Commerce report documented how they had caused the trade deficit to reach a record high while also destroying over 300,000 jobs.

Unfortunately for Trump and his army of sycophants, the truth of the matter is that his tariffs and trade wars created an economic hell that only grew worse with his tyrannical response to COVID and the trillions of dollars he and the Republican Party spent to stimulate the economy. There’s plenty of evidence to show how Trump’s economic policies were the start of America’s economic hell, but his handling of the COVID “pandemic” finished the job, and America still hasn’t recovered.

Donald Trump’s irrational and erratic economic policies mixed with his egomaniacal narcissism did serious harm to the economy, and that’s only going to happen again once he launches his trade war by imposing a 25 percent tariff on Canada and Mexico.

 

David Leach is the owner of the Strident Conservative. He holds people of every political stripe accountable for their failure to uphold conservative values, and he promotes those values instead of political parties.

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