Tag Archives: Tariffs

Trump’s Fake Fix for a Bad Policy, by Walter E. Block

Posted on August 6, 2018 | Leave a comment

In classic government fashion, Trump’s “fixing” one mistake with a bigger mistake. From Walter E. Block at lewrockwell.com:

As an economist who shares President Trump’s belief that we should be cutting taxes and shrinking government, one might expect me to be enthralled by his policies. But that is not the sentiment I and many other libertarians feel when it comes to his decision to impose tariffs on steel, aluminum and a host of other products made overseas, particularly in China.

On Wednesday, Mr. Trump and the president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, said they had reached an agreement to step back from a trade war and discuss ways to lower tariffs and other trade barriers. But the outcome of those talks are far from certain, and trade tensions between the United States and China remain very high.

What is driving the president’s apparent eagerness to impose tariffs is a simple and wrongheaded idea that plays to a large part of his base: That a trade war will spur job growth in America. He is trying to use tariffs to give a leg up to American industries against countries that manufacture the same products that we do — whether steel, aluminum or cars — but more efficiently. And who could be against that if it creates more jobs?

But in reality simply creating jobs alone does not make for a strong economy. What we really want is to increase production. And to achieve that, we need to allocate labor as efficiently as possible. One way to do that is to make sure that if there are other countries that can create certain goods more efficiently than we can, it is to our advantage to trade with them for these items, rather than manufacture them ourselves. The result is cheaper goods.

But tariffs do nothing to improve this efficient allocation of labor. They also do not increase or decrease employment. They just shift jobs around, and almost always in a manner that hurts the economy.

To continue reading: Trump’s Fake Fix for a Bad Policy

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Why Trump Won’t Start a Real Trade War, by Bill Bonner

Posted on August 2, 2018 | Leave a comment

Another take on the “trade war” with China, and why it really happen. From Bill Bonner at bonnerandpartners.com:

The New York Times reports:

President Trump escalated his trade war with China on Wednesday, ordering his administration to consider more than doubling proposed tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods to 25 percent from 10 percent, as talks between Washington and Beijing remain at a standstill.

Mr. Trump instructed the United States trade representative to look into increasing tariffs on Chinese imports like fish, petroleum, chemicals, handbags, and other goods to 25 percent, a significant escalation in a dispute that is beginning to take a toll on industries and consumers in both countries. A final decision on the size and scope of the tariffs is not expected before September.

Fake Wars

The Deep State welcomes war. But, especially in the case of a trade war with China, it must be a phony war.

And here is a good test. We’ll see how well, or badly, we have connected the dots.

According to the picture we see, the Deep State – the more or less permanent, but fluid and schismatic, group of insiders that controls U.S. public policies – uses war to gain public support for policies that actually serve only one purpose… to shift power, wealth, and status from the public to itself.

That’s why the trade war has to be fake.

Real wars threaten the Deep State’s survival. The wars in the Middle East (now also in Africa), for example, help justify trillions of dollars of wealth transfers to the military/industrial/surveillance complex.

But the U.S. has nothing really at stake in these fights; no matter what happens, it will not be invaded, bombed, or humiliated.

Likewise, the wars at home – against poor people and drug users – go on for decades. And no one is better off – except the Deep State industries engaged in the wars themselves (welfare agencies, prisons, police, drug pushers, etc.).

The Donald’s new trade war is a delight, too; already, the sidewalks are slick with greasy swamp water; lobbyists line up around the block to ask for special favors and dispensations. The insiders gain power and money by controlling crony trade deals.

But neither the president nor his crackpot advisors may realize the danger. And here is where it gets interesting: They mustn’t allow this war to get out of hand.

To continue reading: Why Trump Won’t Start a Real Trade War

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Here’s Why Trump Is Hiking Chinese Tariffs To 25%, by Tyler Durden

Posted on August 2, 2018 | Leave a comment

China is counteracting Trump’s tariffs by allowing the its currency, the yuan, to depreciate. So Trump is raising tariffs some more. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

One of the cited reasons behind today’s market slide which started in Asia and promptly swept the rest of the globe, is a belated appreciation of Tuesday’s news that the Trump administration is now considering more than doubling proposed tariffs on a further $200 billion worth of Chinese goods to 25%, up from an original 10%.

But what exactly prompted Trump to push for the sharp reset in Chinese tariffs?

The answer was actually first given by Trump himself three weeks ago, when in a candid CNBC interview the president said that he was not only watching the US trade deficit with China, but also its currency, which was “dropping like a rock”, suggesting that trade war was morphing into currency war after he berated the Fed for hiking rates and pushing the dollar higher (when, as we explain below, Trump should be commending Powell for doing just that).

Fast forward to today, when the WSJ gives some further color, noting that while “the administration didn’t spell out a particular rationale for increasing the tariff…. the reasons include anger over the Chinese government’s failure to approve the merger of U.S.-based Qualcomm Inc. and Dutch chip maker NXP Semiconductors, which forced the companies to scrap a deal aimed at boosting Qualcomm’s reach into new markets.”

The WSJ also cites “industry officials who have discussed the move with the White House” and who said that another, perhaps far more important reason for the tariff increase “is to compensate for the decline in the value of the yuan by about 6% over the past two months.”

“It’s important countries refrain from devaluing currencies for competitive purposes,” a senior administration official said, and although he didn’t accuse China of acting in that fashion, the implication was clear.

Yet another reason that forced Trump’s hand is that as several banks have recently pointed out, the Yuan devaluation to date has effectively offset the adverse impact to Beijing from the $34 billion in tariffs enacted on Chinese goods, mainly machinery and components (to which China retaliated with tariffs on the same amount of U.S. exports, especially farm products).

To continue reading: Here’s Why Trump Is Hiking Chinese Tariffs To 25%

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Why Americans Are About To Experience Sharply Higher Prices, by Tyler Durden

Posted on July 30, 2018 | Leave a comment

Tariffs are about to bite. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

A few weeks ago, SocGen asked what is arguably the most important question relating to the global trade wars: are tariffs inflationary or deflationary? While there were various nuances, its conclusion was simple: “Inflationary short term, disinflationary medium term.”

It appears that the “short-term” part has now arrived, because after several rounds of tit-for-tat tariffs and retaliations between the US and China, American consumers are about to be hit with sharply higher prices as tariffs on industrial metals put pressure on U.S. manufacturers.

In May, President Trump imposed steel and aluminum tariffs on the EU, Canada, and Mexico to help preserve America’s manufacturing base. The response: steel and aluminum prices have risen 33% and 11% respectively since the beginning of the year, as manufacturers began to price in the tariffs.

Moreover, tariffs on additional imported products from China have added even more costs for producers, which are now being aggressively passed through to the consumer.

“You’re going to see higher prices passed on to consumers…almost immediately” Matt Gold, a former deputy assistant U.S. Trade Representative for North America under former President Barack Obama, told CNBC. “A lot of goods are already warehoused that were imported months ago, so it takes a bit of time to catch up, but prices catch up pretty fast,” he added.

“The way it works is that a U.S. importer pays the taxes to the customs duties or customs tariffs to the U.S. Treasury,” Gold explained. “Of course, that’s going to effect the sale price [and] whatever price at which the exporter sells to the importer is going to lower, because the importer has to pay duties in addition to paying the purchase price.”

Gold added that for American consumers, those soaring costs would be spread “really across the board. With Chinese retaliatory tariffs, we’ve imposed those on $34 billion of different goods coming from China. It’s a very broad array of consumer products, industrial products.”

To continue reading: Why Americans Are About To Experience Sharply Higher Prices

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Did Tariffs Make America Great? by Patrick J. Buchanan

Posted on July 27, 2018 | Leave a comment

Patrick Buchanan makes the historical case for tariffs. From Buchanan at buchanan.org:

“Make America Great Again!” will, given the astonishing victory it produced for Donald Trump, be recorded among the most successful slogans in political history.

Yet it raises a question: How did America first become the world’s greatest economic power?

In 1998, in “The Great Betrayal: How American Sovereignty and Social Justice Are Being Sacrificed to the Gods of the Global Economy,” this writer sought to explain.

However, as the blazing issue of that day was Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton, it was no easy task to steer interviewers around to the McKinley Tariff.

Free trade propaganda aside, what is the historical truth?

As our Revolution was about political independence, the first words and acts of our constitutional republic were about ensuring America’s economic independence.

“A free people should promote such manufactures as tend to render them independent on others for essentials, especially military supplies,” said President Washington in his first message to Congress.

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The first major bill passed by Congress was the Tariff Act of 1789.

Weeks later, Washington imposed tonnage taxes all foreign shipping. The U.S. Merchant Marine was born.

In 1791, Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton wrote in his famous Report on Manufactures:

“The wealth … independence, and security of a Country, appear to be materially connected with the prosperity of manufactures. Every nation … ought to endeavor to possess within itself all the essentials of national supply. These compromise the means of subsistence, habitation, clothing, and defence.”

During the War of 1812, British merchants lost their American markets. When peace came, flotillas of British ships arrived at U.S. ports to dump underpriced goods and to recapture the markets the Brits had lost.

Henry Clay and John Calhoun backed James Madison’s Tariff of 1816, as did ex-free traders Jefferson and John Adams. It worked.

In 1816, the U.S. produced 840 thousand yards of cloth. By 1820, it was 13,874 thousand yards. America had become self-sufficient.

To continue reading: Did Tariffs Make America Great?

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Trump’s Farm Bailout Is Win-Lose, by Bill Bonner

Posted on July 25, 2018 | Leave a comment

What Trump taketh away from farmers in trade he’s trying to give back to them in subsidies. From Bill Bonner at bonnerandpartners.com:

What a spectacular summer!

People may be frying eggs on the sidewalks of Algiers and fighting forest fires in Sweden, but here in Ireland, the heatwave is a delight.

Farmers are grousing, of course, but we are enjoying daytime temperatures in the mid-70s and beautiful, clear skies.

Farmers are grumbling in the U.S., too. The weather is always a favorite subject. And this year, they have something more to kvetch about – the trade war.

Casualties are beginning to pile up. This from Bloomberg:

Harley-Davidson Inc. on Tuesday cut its profit margin forecast, citing tariffs. The iconic motorcycle maker was caught in the crossfire of the trade war last month when it announced plans to shift some U.S. production overseas, prompting attacks from Trump.

Dutch electronics firm Royal Philips NV Chief Executive Frans van Houten says an escalation of tariffs may mean it has to pass on costs to customers, and Whirlpool Corp. said rising raw material costs hurt results in some of its markets in the second quarter.

Farm Bailout

Out on the Great Plains, the bodies lie especially thick. The damage estimate so far: $11 billion.

But U.S. farmers are not locking arms like Londoners during the Blitz, or going on short rations like Soviets during the Siege of Leningrad. If anyone is going to make wartime sacrifices… it’s not going to be them.

They’ve got two senators per state… and a Republican Party that needs their money and their votes.

As expected, America’s president proposed yesterday to bail out the farm sector with $12 billion in welfare payments.

Naturally, the president feels some responsibility in the matter, since it was he who put the hayseeds under water.

He also looks ahead to the midterm election season, when the fellows with the big tractors make a big impression on the politicians.

The Donald has replaced win-win with win-lose. But the $12 billion won’t come out of Donald Trump’s pocket.

Nor will it come from the U.S. Treasury. The feds don’t have any money; they’re already projected to run a trillion dollars in the hole for fiscal year 2019.

So where will the money come from?

Will taxes be raised on consumers, also hurt by the trade war? Will the steel producers… or steel workers… or steel buyers – similarly damaged – pony up the money? Which group will get the rewards? Which will be punished?

To continue reading: Trump’s Farm Bailout Is Win-Lose

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6 Reasons Why a Trade War with the Chinese Is Pointless, by Patrick Barron

Posted on July 21, 2018 | Leave a comment

From the standpoint of economic analysis, trade wars never make sense. From Patrick Barron at mises.org:

In a recent post I explained that China’s manipulations of its own currency hurt only herself and not her trading partners and, therefore, retaliatory tariffs were not warranted and would be self-defeating anyway. China harms herself by causing her own money supply to expand, which destroys capital through malinvestment and causes prices to rise domestically. Retaliatory tariffs cause American goods to rise in price, resulting in a recession and generally lower standard of living. Few economists claim otherwise.

It seems that everyone is in favor of free trade, as long as it is the other guy who must compete with foreign products. When it comes to their own products, the most typical response from American manufacturers begins with the caveat that “although free trade is beneficial most of the time, it causes harm under certain circumstances.” There follows a convoluted chain of cause-and-effect purporting to prove that lower priced foreign goods would hollow out America’s key manufacturing industries and turn America into a second class nation.

The purpose of this brief response is to counter these claims and explain why understanding economic theory is vital to the argument in favor of free trade.

There are two books which address the fact that we cannot experiment with an economy the way that physical scientists do. We must use logic to form irrefutable conclusions of what MUST happen, even if we cannot see it! The first is Frederic Bastiat’s early nineteenth century classic That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen . Henry Hazlitt’s updated the book a hundred years later in order to appeal to modern readers. His Economics in One Lesson employs a series of short stories to illustrate that one must always consider the economic effects of an intervention on all and not just a few actors, plus, that one must look to the long term effects of an intervention and not just the short term effects.

So, let’s use logic to consider the effects of China’s economic interventions on itself and its trading partners who do nothing to retaliate against China in any way.

1. China uses its capital in an inefficient way . Outright subsidies to any industry must be paid by someone. The very fact that China believes that it cannot compete in certain industries to its own satisfaction without subsidies is an admission that these industries are inefficient. Therefore, Chinese internal subsidies are transfers of capital from more efficient industries to less efficient industries. Put another way, if the targeted industries already were very efficient, more capital would flow to these industries and subsidies wouldn’t be necessary.

To continue reading: 6 Reasons Why a Trade War with the Chinese Is Pointless

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Trump’s Trade War May Spark a Chinese Debt Crisis, by Anne Stevenson-Yang

Posted on July 20, 2018 | Leave a comment

Trade wars spark unintended, and sometimes disastrous, consequences. From Anne Stevenson-Yang at bloombergquint.com:

There’s no chance China will cut its trade surplus with the U.S. in response to President Donald Trump’s tariff threats. For starters, Washington has made no specific demand to which Beijing can respond. But its efforts may have an unexpected side effect: a debt crisis in China.

The 25 percent additional tariffs on exports of machinery and electronics looked, at first blush, like a stealth tax on offshoring. The focus on categories like semiconductors and nuclear components, in which U.S.-owned manufacturers in China are strong, recalled Trump’s 2016 promise to tax “any business that leaves our country.”

It seems, though, that offshoring wasn’t the target after all. Now, with the imposition of new tariffs on low-value exports that mostly involve Asian value chains, the simple fact of selling cheap products that the U.S. buys has become the problem.

Either way, the administration appears set on shrinking its current-account deficit (which, at a moderate 2.4 percent of GDP, is far lower than the 6 percent clocked in 2006-7) just as the Federal Reserve raises interest rates. Distress has already been registered in China. On July 13, the yuan (also known as the renminbi) hit 6.725 to the dollar, the weakest in a year and 5 percent lower than at the end of May.

Such a move is nothing earth-shaking for less controlled currencies. But a stable renminbi is a key plank in the leadership’s promise to its people, and the exchange rate is tightly managed by the central bank.

Chinese investors have been buying official assurances for a year that the renminbi would be a fortress, but now they’re not so sure and are exporting money again: May saw net capital outflows and a decline in the foreign-exchange reserves. The currency is the most visible sign of slippage in the image that China tries to project of an economy so brilliantly managed that the bright sun of GDP expansion is untroubled by even temporary clouds on trade, employment or consumption.

There are many other signs: The Shanghai Composite Index of stocks has declined 7 percent in a month, dropping below the government’s red line of 3,000 for the first time since September 2016. Corporate bonds are about to set a record for the most defaults in a year. Junk bond yields are spiking. The chorus of anxiety about debt is reaching a crescendo, with daily press reports on governments that can’t pay their employees or meet pension obligations. Property prices are tumbling in some cities and frozen in others whose governments have placed a finger in the dyke by halting transactions.

To continue reading: Trump’s Trade War May Spark a Chinese Debt Crisis

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Trade Myths Die Hard, by Laurence M. Vance

Posted on July 10, 2018 | Leave a comment

Trade is what people do when they are free to do so. Sometimes they trade with people from other countries. People trade because it makes both parties better off, or they wouldn’t do it. When governments restrict or stop trade, people are worse off. It really is that simple. From Laurence M. Vance at lewrockwell.com:

I received several comments and questions regarding trade after the publication of my recent article, “Stupid Countries Restrict Trade.” Here is a summary of some questions that a few people had:

What should the government of the United States do if other countries impose tariffs on U.S. goods exported to their countries?

What should the government of the United States do if a country subsidizes its exports to the United States?

What should the government of the United States do if it had no tariffs on foreign imports but other countries imposed tariffs on U.S. exports?

Trade myths die hard. Here are three of them I want to refute based on the comments and questions I recently received.

Trade takes place between countries.

To the contrary, trade almost never takes place between countries. Although people often talk about the United States trading with China, India, or Canada, foreign trade really just occurs when entities in one country engage in commerce with entities in some other country. No county offers to exchange 1,000 bushels of apples for another country’s 1,000 bushels of tomatoes. No country buys up 5,000 tubes of toothpaste from domestic manufacturers and offers to sell them to the government of, or a business, organization, or individual in, another country for cash. Trade takes place between individuals, organizations, and businesses in countries, not between countries themselves. An individual, organization, or business in one country may sell a product to the government of another country, but that doesn’t mean that trade is between countries. The rare case of one country trading with another would be like the U.S. government selling an old Navy ship to the government of another country.

To continue reading: Trade Myths Die Hard

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Real Coke and Car Tariffs, by Eric Peters

Posted on July 3, 2018 | Leave a comment

What tariffs do to the companies and consumers upon whom they fall. From Eric Peters at theburningplatform.com:

Real Coke – the most American of sodas – comes nowadays from Mexico. I mean of course the stuff made with sugar and put into glass bottles, the way Coke was once made and sold here  – as opposed to the high fructose corn syrup sweetened sludge (in aluminum cans and plastic bottles) currently sold here.

Interestingly, this is the case because of tariffs.

On cane sugar, which costs artificially more here in the U.S. thanks to them – in order to punish the manufacture of “cheap” sugar outside the U.S.

It is why American-made soda – not just Coke – is generally sweetened with HFC instead of cane sugar.

Almost everything else, too.

The soda sweetener switcheroo happened back in the ’80s. You may be old enough to remember. Real Coke was replaced with New Coke, which was Coke with HFC instead of sugar. Then – after an uproar – came Classic Coke, which wasn’t Coke. Because it was made with HFC, too.

But it was cheaper to make and sell  than real Coke with sugar.

Does the tariff on sugar benefit American soda drinkers? Their waistlines – and much-upticked tendency toward obesity and diabetes – provides the answer.

Cheapness – especially when it is artificial – has its price.

Not surprisingly, many people wise to the costs of HFC are willing to pay a little extra to get Mexican Coke – real Coke –  made with cane sugar. Or the more expensive boutique sodas which are made here, with artificially expensive cane sugar.

But if it weren’t for the tariffs on sugar, they wouldn’t have to go to Mexico (so to speak) to get a real Coke. They would be able to buy American-made Coke – without HFC.

And it wouldn’t be artificially expensive.

No one blames the Mexicans for HFC-laden American-made sodas. The problem is not enough people blame the U.S. government for the fact that they are effectively forced to drink HFC-laden sodas – or pay extra for sodas without the HFC.

The sugar isn’t naturally expensive. But the tariffs are.

Now the Orange One wants to apply tariffs to vehicles, apparently on the same principle – and it will have the same effects.

To continue reading: Real Coke and Car Tariffs

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