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Trump's Tariffs

US consumers profit from foreign imports of wares with superior price/quality ratio. Tariffs degrade such ratios. America loses.
 
ceptimus said:
The governments, in the short term, will be glad to have all the new tariff revenue they collect. In the medium and long term their economies will suffer. As usual there will be bickering about 'who started it'. Canada doesn't like the USA tariffs on metals, but it does like its own 200% + tariff on USA milk that was imposed earlier.
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You make it sound like the tariffs on dairy are some new thing. They're not, they've been around for decades. Most notably, they were around when we were negotiating NAFTA.

Do you imagine that the US just agreed to let us keep these tariffs, in return for nothing at all? Somewhere in NAFTA, there's a clause that is more favourable to the US than it would have been if we'd given up our tariffs on dairy. But of course, Trump focuses only on what Canada got, without reference to what the US got. Which is, of course, how he views every deal - what he gets is fair, what you get is unfair, and he'll do everything he can, up to and including declaring bankruptcy, to screw you out of getting your share.
 
Horatius said:
You make it sound like the tariffs on dairy are some new thing. They're not, they've been around for decades. Most notably, they were around when we were negotiating NAFTA.

Do you imagine that the US just agreed to let us keep these tariffs, in return for nothing at all? Somewhere in NAFTA, there's a clause that is more favourable to the US than it would have been if we'd given up our tariffs on dairy. But of course, Trump focuses only on what Canada got, without reference to what the US got. Which is, of course, how he views every deal - what he gets is fair, what you get is unfair, and he'll do everything he can, up to and including declaring bankruptcy, to screw you out of getting your share.
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Specifically, the USA wanted to reserve the right to continue to subsidize American dairy (estimates are that the mean average subsidy is about 140%?) and in exchange allowed Canada to protect our farmers as we saw fit. Both countries value our food supply management, we just chose different strategies.

I'm all for removing Canadian tariffs in exchange for ending American dairy farmers' subsidies, but this would make both countries' farmers vulnerable to international competition, not sure if either country really wants that.
 
ceptimus said:
As usual there will be bickering about 'who started it'. Canada doesn't like the USA tariffs on metals, but it does like its own 200% + tariff on USA milk that was imposed earlier.
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This wasn’t “imposed” they were negotiated under NAFTA. The US received other concessions in return.

It’s part of a system designed to deal with very different systems for stabilizing food production in the two countries. The US relies on massive direct subsidies for farmer that allow them to sell their products below cost and still survive. Canada uses a supply management system that gives quotas to producers. Part of that quota goes to US producers who can sell that product in Canada tariff free.

Production above and beyond this is subjected to a soft limit which is where the 200% tariff comes in. Below these limits Canadian producers face larger barriers selling dairy products to the US that US producers face selling their products into Canada. The result is that the US sells far more dairy products to Canada than Canada sells to the US. Take away all the tariffs, subsidies and trade barriers and what probably happens is that Western Canadian producers displace producers in both the US and Eastern Canada.
 
blutoski said:
I'm all for removing Canadian tariffs in exchange for ending American dairy farmers' subsidies, but this would make both countries' farmers vulnerable to international competition, not sure if either country really wants that.
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They could still place limits on imports from other nations. As I said above the big winner if all tariffs and subsidies were eliminated would be producers in Western Canada where farm operations are much larger and optimised for cost rather than intensity. A 300-acre farm in Wisconsin or Quebec just isn’t going to produce feed as efficiently as an 8 000-acre farm in Saskatchewan and those efficiencies make their way though the whole system.

Insisting on maintaining supply management as part of NAFTA was a very deliberate political decision to side with Quebec farmers of Western Canadian farmers.
 
I'll have to find it again, but i recently saw that US dairy farmers get 72c in the dollar subsidies- that isnt a 'level playing field' but the trumpff doesnt like to mention that whenever he is railing against 'unfair Canadian tariffs' does he...
 
Dabop said:
I'll have to find it again, but i recently saw that US dairy farmers get 72c in the dollar subsidies- that isnt a 'level playing field'
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You say that like it's one of the things we are supposed to have, but nobody actually wants a level playing field.

Politicians want votes, farmers want to maintain their lifestyle, and businesses want to beat the competition by any means fair or foul. This is a symbiotic relationship that perpetuates itself worldwide, because (almost) nobody is brave enough to break it.

Subsidies distort the market (with all the harm that implies) but you won't hear capitalists complaining about it when they themselves are the beneficiaries. They may say that they are all for free markets and small government, but in reality it's all about making money - and fairness doesn't come into it.

When Trump says 'unfair', what he really means is 'having to play fair'. We never had to in the past, so it's 'unfair' to make us do it now!
 
Darat said:
GM making noises about moving production out of the USA as a direct result of Trump's tariffs.
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Well that would play nicely for President Trump because Obama's support helped to save GM so naturally President Trump should be the one to undo it. Like Harley Davidson no doubt, if GM makes products outside the US then they deserve to go out of business. :rolleyes:
 
President Trump's tariffs against China have now come into force:

US tariffs on $34bn (£25.7bn) of Chinese goods have come into effect, signalling the start of a trade war between the world's two largest economies.

The 25% levy came into effect at midnight Washington time.

China has retaliated by imposing a similar 25% tariff on 545 US products, also worth a total of $34bn.
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44707253

I guess we'll see whether President Trump is right about how easy it is for the US to win trade wars.
 
The Don said:
President Trump's tariffs against China have now come into force:



https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44707253

I guess we'll see whether President Trump is right about how easy it is for the US to win trade wars.
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It used to be easy to win them against China, as the UK found in the nineteenth century when China tried to ban imports of opium. But is it still as easy? We may find out soon enough.
 
President Trump's reaction is to double down:

Donald Trump has threatened to impose tariffs worth hundreds of billions of dollars on Chinese imports to the US as a trade war between the world's two largest economies began on Friday.

US tariffs on $34bn (£25.7bn) of Chinese goods have come into effect.

China retaliated by imposing a similar 25% tariff on 545 US products, also worth a total of $34bn.

The US President said America may target Chinese goods worth $500bn - the total value of Chinese imports in 2017.
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44744033

I'm sure that US consumers will be thrilled at these new higher prices for Chinese-manufactured goods.
 
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