As messy as things are, they could get uglier still.
Tariffs
Baylen Linnekin|5.18.2019 8:30 AM
Last week, President Donald Trump announced he would impose new tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of goods produced in China. Many of those tariffed goods—just like the U. S. goods China has imposed retaliatory tariffs on—are farm products. Consequently, this latest round of tariffs is expected to add to the already higher prices Americans are paying for a variety of foods.
U. S. agricultural exports to China totaled $20 billion in 2017. Those exports come in about as broad a range as you could imagine. China’s retaliatory tariffs have hit U. S. farmers hard.
« Soybean farmers, pork producers and a growing number of other agricultural interests across a range of states—including cherry producers, corn growers, and lobstermen—have complained that they are collateral damage caught in the middle of the escalating trade battle, » the Washington Postreported this week.
The CEO of Del Monte, makers of popular canned produce, said this week that the company was forced to raise prices on U. S. consumers by 10 percent due to Trump’s tariffs.
« Since China imposed tariffs last fall, [Indiana soybean and corn farmer Brent] Bible has nowhere to sell his soybean and corn crops, » NPR reported this week. « And that situation just got worse, because the futures trading market started planning for higher tariffs earlier this week. » Bible told NPR the tariffs had cost him $50,000 over just the past three days.
Earlier this week, Reason’s Eric Boehm suggested that the most likely winner of the ongoing trade skirmishes between Trump and China would probably be bacteria, roaches, and rats, the appetites of which will be tested by all the food grown by American farmers that tariffs would cause to rot in warehouses rather than be sold.
Trump, who gave billions to subsidize U. S. farmers (and, um, Brazilian criminals) who were impacted by his earlier tariffs, has already proposed billions of new bailout dollars to help them deal with the inevitable fallout from his latest tariffs.
Does that make any sense?
It does to Trump, who loves tariffs. Last year he famously dubbed himself Tariff Man. In his 2011 New York Times bestseller, Time to Get Tough: Make America Great Again!, Trump writes that « a true commander in chief would sit down with the Chinese and demand a real deal, a far better deal. Either China plays by the rules or we slap tariffs on Chinese goods. End of story. »
But it’s not the end of the story.
Back in March, Trump hailed the « substantial progress » he says he’d made on trade with China. Those days are over.
« [A]fter weeks of optimistic statements by Trump and members of his administration about how trade talks were progressing, Trump abruptly escalated tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods last week and opened the door to even more, » CNN reported this week. The network also noted that U. S. farmers are pissed over the move. That includes farmers such as this guy, who says he voted for Trump.
Trump’s attempts to calm farmers came in the form of a typical Word Salad that was anything but soothing.
« Our great Patriot Farmers will be one of the biggest beneficiaries of what is happening now, » Trump tweeted earlier this week. He also let those « great Patriot Farmers » know that his administration « will be making up the difference »—the income shortfall Trump’s tariffs have wrought on those same great Patriot Farmers—out of « the massive Tariffs being paid to the United States for allowing China, and others, to do business with us.
