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People love tariffs until prices inflate
"People" also seem to love tariffs even after prices inflate, because "populist" politicians responsible for tariffs in first place explain higher prices by "greedflation," "corporate greed," "price-gouging," "billionaires," "thanks capitalism!" etc., and sometimes even double down on tariffs, to "punish" the "culprits" - most recently it's been "China, China, China!"
www.forbes.com - Sorry, China. Most Americans Support Higher Prices On Your Imports. - Forbes, 2022-04-24
finance.yahoo.com - Some of the most popular campaign ideas are also the dumbest - YFin, 2024-08-19
|------- If you told voters your plan was to raise their taxes by $1,700 per year, you'd never get elected. Yet Trump's plan to boost tariffs on imports would do just that... Trump says other countries pay the tariffs, which is a blatant lie. ...
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When there were articles posted on DR about inflationary nature of Trump's tariffs, most here agreed that "Trump has no understanding of the economics and his tariffs are stupid" and cause prices to rise. When pointed out that no one was stopping Biden to single-handedly cancel these "stupid and inflationary" tariffs - a "populist" policy that Trump cynically "stole" from Democrats, because the union bosses and Dem protectionist and isolationist "base" love them - hardly anyone said a word.
Now that Biden slapped $18B additional tariffs on China, same attempted to excuse them as "small and targeted" (of course!) but still can't explain why Trump's "dumb, inflationary tariffs" remain in place - just "Trump's tariffs bad, Biden tariffs good!"
www.npr.org - Biden kept Trump's tariffs on Chinese imports. This is who pays the price.
|------- ... "Unfortunately, the tariffs have caused us to move manufacturing of some of our products over to China," Digre said. "If the tariffs went away, we would start moving a lot of that stuff back here."
Trump's tariffs were an about-face from decades of free trade policy. Economists warned that American consumers would pay the price, U.S. companies complained they would lose money to foreign competitors...
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Example from (one of many) crucial supply-chain cogs:
www.latimes.com - Port of L.A. faces shifting winds in business and politics - LAT, 2024-07-18
|------- What about tariffs? Biden recently increased tariffs on a wider array of Chinese goods - steel, EV cars, solar cells. And there's potential for even higher, broader tariffs to come, especially if Trump wins.
Those tariffs were met with retaliatory tariffs that really were very impactful on a negative side for a number of American companies ... What we've seen with tariffs policy, and in some cases rhetoric, is that here at the Port of Los Angeles, the portfolio with China is now down to about 45% [from 57% three years ago].
No one can replace China as a manufacturing hub. ... But we've made up that difference by capturing cargo from other markets, and specifically Southeast Asia - Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand... We've also seen growth in manufacturing in Mexico. ...
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So, here we are... Presidents and their parties often have a choice to make : "good policy / bad politics" and "good politics / bad policies."
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