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10/13/24: Still here, tomorrow gets a new post, one that I didn't want to write. Many things going on, not enough time in the day. I have a dozen articles that I need to finish. I am working on them. I promise.

Trump's Tariff War

I believe tariffs are a bad thing. If you read Economics in One Lesson, you will learn that tariffs are a tax on incoming goods. While that was the way the government raised revenue in the 18th and 19th centuries (no income tax), from the late 19th century to today tariffs have been used to boost the cost (and thus the price to you) of foreign goods above the same goods produced domestically as a protectionist measure. This is a Bad Thing in today's global economy because we import from and export to just about every other country. There is almost no product you can purchase today where all of the components are manufactured in one country. Also, if we impose tariffs on incoming goods, there is nothing stopping the country we imported from to impose tariffs on things we ship them. In the end, no one wins because the company loses business and the consumer purchases less because the price is higher.

It's been all over the news since Trump took office about the tariffs he has imposed on the EU, China and other places. "TRADE WAR!!!!" is what all of our news outlets headlines have been.

Did you hear about this news? From CBS: Trump says U.S., EU working toward "zero" tariffs and NPR: Trump And EU Agree To Work Toward Zero Tariffs. It turns out that the EU had a tariffs on a variety of US goods.

If you had listened to Trump himself, rather than what the MSM talking heads are saying what Trump says, you would have heard Trump say he "wanted to negotiate better trade deals with other countries."

So in a trade relationship with the EU, they slapped tariffs on our goods, while we had few, if any tariffs on EU goods. So Trump equals and exceeds the tariffs on EU goods, the EU threatens to escalate their tariffs and back-and-forth several times. Then Trump meets with the EU and says, "These tariffs hurt both of us. Let's eliminate all of them. What do you think?" In a not-very-amazing move, the EU agreed. I say "not-very-amazing" because when you look at it from a global business point of view, tariffs are unquestionably A Bad Thing.

So, Trump has done a Very Good Thing. With EU tariffs on US goods gone, we should get more orders from Europe for our stuff. More orders == more demand == more jobs. Now all he has to do is rinse, wash, repeat for China.

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