Canada and China Strike Back—Here’s How They’re Retaliating Against Trump’s Tariffs
President Donald Trump’s decision to impose a 25% tariff on imports from Mexico and Canada officially took effect on Tuesday. This major move is meant to pressure America’s top trading partners but…
It's horrible, and looks like trump uses the tariffs as a distraction (still painful to everyone) to make media stop talking about Ukraine.
I see news that Zelenskyy will travel again to sign the deal, and my expectations are that they will still do something.
I don't think it's a distraction, Trump's been talking about tariffs since he took office. And besides it seems clear he doesn't give two shits about what people say.
He's been threatening tariffs as a blunt weapon since 2016 (2015?). That's how Mexico was going to pay for the wall.
The second aim is the redistribution the wealth from the poor to the rich.
If tariffs are bad for the country implementing them, why do we need to retaliate? Couldn't we just let them be and focus on building other trading partners?
Sort of. A unilateral tariff generates a trade imbalance in favor of the economy imposing the tariff. By applying commensurate tariffs in the other direction, you keep the trade balance you had before the tariff was imposed.
They could, but building other trading partners in a generally capitalist economy might take a bit of helping. By making American goods more expensive to import maybe Canadian importers will look to other non tariff ridden sources.
Like super simply the $100 item from American with a tariff is now $125 so the non tariff item from not America that costs say $110 is now competitive. All this is going to do is wreck up long established supply chains and cost end consumers more.
The reason Trump is using tariffs is because Congress has delegated that power over to the executive. He isn't protecting any crucial industry or national security or anything just hand waving nonsense about tariffs lowering taxes that his barely literate base is eating up. And of course the Republicans working in gov't are also eating it up, because their goal has been to destroy what little social safety net exists in this country and generally show that the gov't doesn't work by breaking it.
Trade creates value in both countries, so by extension tariffs destroy value in both countries. Since Canada is much smaller than the US (in population), the tariffs hurt Canada more than the US. There is good reason for Canada to be extremely upset, and counter tariffs on the US are well justified.
Shame about the tariffs, but Joly is smokin hot!