Last updated on September 26th, 2018 at 12:58 pm
Trump is threatening to put tariffs on US cars that are assembled in Canada, as the president has no idea how trade and tariffs work.
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Trump said, “I’ll be calling the prime minister very soon, and we’ll start negotiations, and if they’d like to negotiate fairly, we’ll do that. You know, they have the tariffs of almost 300% on some of our dairy products. We can’t that. I think with Canada, frankly, the easiest thing we can do is tariff their cars coming in. It’s a tremendous amount of money and a simple negotiation that could end in one day and we’ve taken a lot of money the following day, but I think we’ll give them a chance to probably have a separate deal. We could have a separate deal that we could put it into this deal.”
Trump is threatening a tariff that will hurt GM and Ford
A Moody’s report on Trump’s auto tariff found, “Tariffs would be a negative for both Ford and GM. The burden would be greater for GM because it depends more on imports from Mexico and Canada to support US operations. In addition, a significant portion of GM’s high-margin trucks and SUVs are sourced from Mexico and Canada … Both manufacturers would need to absorb the cost of scaling back Mexican and Canadian production and moving some back to the US.â€
Trump isn’t bending countries to his will with this trade war. He is hurting US companies and killing jobs.
Trump still has no clue how tariffs work
A tariff is a tax. The United States government does not get that revenue directly. Automakers are not going to pay the government more money to bring parts into the US from Canada. The cost of a tariff is passed on to the consumer in the form of higher prices. The US government is not going to “take in a lot of money,” as Trump inaccurately claimed. The president keeps getting it wrong on tariffs because it appears that he has no idea how tariffs and trade work.
Trump thinks that he is winning when he is really harming the US economy.
A Trump auto tariff will harm US companies and cost more people their jobs, but clueless Trump thinks that he is making good deals while American workers and consumers pay the price for his ignorance.
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Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
