This was to be expected but it is happening a bit faster than I thought (lag wise I was expecting 3-6 months).
Trump is the type of guy that if you tell him that you drive a Mercedes, he will have to one up you and tell you he drives a tank. If he thinks he has the upper hand, he will absolutely go as high as possible on tariffs.
Thats why this will all eventually get to maximalist tariffs on all sides. i.e a global trade war
He is picking on Canada and Mexico because both countries export most of their goods to the US vs the US imports a much smaller % of its goods from Canada/Mexico.
If I were Canadian/Mexican, I would definitely view this as a national security threat as Trump wants to economically cripple you. He has really fixated on Canada as well.
Don’t know about you guys, but I would seriously consider at this stage making the US pay more for their energy.
It has to hurt or Trump will simply ignore it, declare victory, and then double down on more tariffs in another area.
Trump only looks at one-half of the trade picture. Canada exports significant cars and parts to the US but we import roughly the same amount from the US. How can you argue with a man who ignores facts?
The Canada-US car industry is the most integrated cross-border industry in the world. It can be blown up by the US but then they would lose the Canadian market. Canadians will import cars from China instead.
Cleveland-Cliffs promised no layoffs for five years when it acquired Canada’s largest steel maker Stelco last year….we’ll see if he keeps that promise.
The CEO of Cleveland-Cliffs says his company is nothing like U.S. Steel, who bought Stelco in 2007 and slashed jobs despite a promise not to. Amid concerns from local union leaders, Lourenco Goncalves says no unionized jobs will be eliminated at Stelco during the first five years of operation
**Ford CEO James Farley, speaking at an investors’ conference in New York on Tuesday, said Mr. Trump’s tariffs are creating “cost and chaos” for the Detroit-based automaker, which makes cars around the world and is a major buyer of steel and aluminum, both raw and in finished parts.
“Let’s be real honest, long term, a 25-per-cent tariff across the Mexico and Canadian border would blow a hole in the U.S. industry that we have never seen,” Mr. Farley said.
“And it frankly gives free rein to South Korean and Japanese and European companies that are bringing 1.5 million to two million vehicles into the U.S. that wouldn’t be subject to those Mexican and Canadian tariffs. It would be one of the biggest windfalls for those companies ever.”**
I’m kind of curious as to what this will do to car buying in Alberta and elsewhere where pick-ups are so popular…
My dad has been thinking about selling his old Chevy Avalanche. I’m thinking he might be smart to buy his new vehicle now and sell his Avalanche if we know the tariffs are coming in.
Well that’s easy to fix, just put tariffs on SK and Japan. It’s sad that Farley has to say this, it’s pretty obvious that massive instability in things like prices of the things they use as inputs is a Bad Thing.
Trump is now set to announce his reciprocal counter-tariffs at 1pm US time.
He is going to target just about everybody I assume (Mexico, Canada, EU, China, SK, Japan etc) so thats definitely going to ignite a large global trade war.
Once that economic trainwreck picks up speed its going to be awfully hard to stop. There will be large scale layoffs and price rises coming soon to the US and abroad.
Look like Trump is going to match any tariff any country has on the US with reciprocal tariffs, as well as tariffs matching any VAT tax that a country has.
We’re basically imposing tariffs in retaliation for countries having sales tax.
Does he not understand that sales tax is also levied on domestically produced goods? It is not a barrier to imports. Maybe Trump should retaliate by levying a US federal sales tax on all goods sold in the US. I am sure the US’ trading partners would find that amusing.
He promised to make America great again. Without explicitly saying so, he wants to go back to the 90’s, the 1890’s that is. A time of no income taxes, monopolies and no regulation when tariffs were sufficient to fund the government.