Trade Wars

[GO-NAD!]

Tariffs as an approach to strategically move industries into one's country are a valid approach - of course the result is that the cost of the goods tariffed, will rise by the amount of the Tariff...

The price and market of/for vehicles in the USA has been distorted by this for decades... with 25% Tariff on imported trucks resulting in American manufacturers focusing on that format to the exclusion for the most part of standard cars (where they have to compete with europe/japan/china etc...)

Australia used to have substantial Tariff's which were put into place to protect the local manufacturing industry, and ensure that we have a local industry... (along with government largess for those same industries) - it worked and Australia had car manufacturing locally from the 1950's to circa 2000 .... then they stopped the funding, and cut back on the Tariff's, GM, Ford and Toyota pretty quickly closed up shop, and transitioned to an import model.
Cost of cars here in Australia has remained high (50% to 100% higher than in the USA).

What may well happen, is that the cost of cars in the USA will rise by 25% to 50% as a result...

The massive cost of moving all production to the US is one thing. Then, there will be the collapse of sales in the Canadian market, since who will want to buy from those manufacturers? It's unbelievable that nobody in that administration is willing to tell him that this is a stupid idea.

 

[mtrycrafts]

Hard to say. I do generally think he's a moron but if the US Treasury is collecting the tariff levies, I can't help but also think that he (or likely someone planning for him) wanted it to bolster government revenue to be spent somewhere else or help balance the books after he makes some tax cut for his billionaire buddies/masters. The cynic in me thinks it's just another underhanded form of taxation on american consumers dressed up as "look at how I'm standing up for you". I suspect part of the reason he backed off was due to at least some of the general public being more aware of who was actually going to pay for it and getting the word out more than he expected.

Yes, the US public is fattening the treasury instead of collecting more taxes, especially from those billionaires and many multi-millionaires.

 

[mtrycrafts]

The massive cost of moving all production to the US is one thing. Then, there will be the collapse of sales in the Canadian market, since who will want to buy from those manufacturers? It's unbelievable that nobody in that administration is willing to tell him that this is a stupid idea.

Everyone in the administration is afraid for their job to oppose T and Musk's billions to come back at them.
Spine surgeons could have a field day doing surgeries to fix all those spines.

 

[dlaloum]

Yes, the US public is fattening the treasury instead of collecting more taxes, especially from those billionaires and many multi-millionaires.

Look at US history.... there used to be high Tariffs, that resulted in a government surplus (yep surplus rather than deficit!) look at the 1890's - it led to the Republicans losing office!