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  • February 18, 2025
What other papers say: Tariff threats ignore crucial complexities | News, sports, jobs

What other papers say: Tariff threats ignore crucial complexities | News, sports, jobs

It’s telling that virtually the only positive economists of any political persuasion are dismissing Donald Trump’s latest pledge to unleash a global tariff war is the possibility that he doesn’t actually mean it. This is an example where Trump’s well-established tendency to say things he knows to be untrue is America’s best hope of avoiding self-inflicted national economic damage.

It is more than ironic that Trump — whose recent election to a second term was helped immeasurably, perhaps decisively, by high inflation under Joe Biden’s presidency — has made aggressive tariffs a centerpiece of his economic agenda. These fees on imported foreign goods will inevitably be passed on to American consumers in the form of higher prices. They could also hurt America’s manufacturing sector, as Missouri in particular learned from Trump’s first-term tariff mania.

Trump promised during this year’s presidential campaign to hit global friends and foes alike with high new tariffs as a misplaced lever to protect American jobs. But even many of his supporters dismissed it as typical Trumpian bluster designed to make him sound tough during the campaign.

What happened last week cannot be shaken off so easily. Trump announced on his Truth Social platform that immediately after taking office on January 20, he will hit Mexico and Canada with tariffs of 25% each, and an additional 10% on top of existing tariffs against China.

He specifically linked Mexico and Canada tariffs to immigration and drug trafficking: “This tariff will remain in effect until drugs, especially Fentanyl, and all illegal aliens stop this invasion of our country!”

Trump bases a radical policy announcement against America’s two largest trading partners on the complete fabrication that illegal immigrants “Taking crime and drugs to levels never seen before.”

He also incorrectly characterizes the very real fentanyl crisis as linked to immigration. According to a KFF study, more than 85% of people convicted in 2023 for cross-border fentanyl trafficking were U.S. citizens. As aptly stated last week by the Wall Street Journal’s staunch conservative editorial staff: “Sir. Trump is threatening the countries, including two neighbors and allies, with economic damage if they do not help him solve a domestic U.S. problem.”

Reasonably structured tariffs have a legitimate place in trade policy, but Trump’s view of these tariffs as cudgels that can be leveled indiscriminately at trading partners ignores a number of crucial complexities.

First, tariffs are, by definition, a tax on American consumers. Trump spent much of this year’s campaign publicly insisting that targeted countries should pay his promised tariffs, signaling that he either doesn’t understand how tariffs work or (more likely) assumed his audience wouldn’t doing.

In fact, the tariffs are paid by U.S. importers, who then pass on the costs in the form of higher prices for goods — as consumers discovered during Trump’s first term. His trade policies included targeted tariffs on imported washing machines, which were intended to boost U.S. production but primarily served to drive up prices across the U.S. market.

Trump’s planned tariffs on Mexico and Canada would further damage Americans’ wallets. Together, these two countries supply roughly a third of all fruits and vegetables sold in the US. Product prices would immediately rise as importers pass on the tariffs to U.S. distributors and grocers. Meanwhile, tariffs on Canadian crude could push up U.S. gas pump prices by as much as 75 cents per gallon, according to some estimates.

Not to mention the impact those countries’ likely retaliatory tariffs would have on foreign sales of U.S. goods. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum immediately threatened such retaliation after Trump’s announcement last week.

Even in the best-case scenario where Trump merely threatens tariffs as a bargaining chip on trade and other issues, the threat alone is generally reckless.

If he continues this reckless tariff binge, and members of Congress do nothing to oppose it, let no one forget the elimination of tariffs as local prices rise and jobs are lost.

– St. Louis Postal Service