America's tariffs

[Allen]

From what all I've heard and read since I was old enough to read is if we sold all the "crap" we can make to Japan, Germany, Mexico, and China and bought nothing from them at all we would probably never equalize out since the trading has been so lopsided for so many years.

Why does America not export very much? Partially it is due to labor cost being so low in some countries but also, it is because other countries place tariffs on American goods coming in to their countries to stimulate buying of their own products. Some products made in America are completely blocked from import to force buying/improving THEIR economy.

Now, they want to whine when the U.S. after all these years considers the same game.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c04z0ydvql2o?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us

[Mark in Ottawa]

There are many more tools and techniques for restricting another country's exports than tariffs, many of which are legitimate. These include limitations on chemicals etc in food products; packaging and labelling requirements; requirement for metric packaging and sizing; quality control system for food inspection; known problems with the food system in the country of origin (e.g. the presence of any cattle with Mad Cow disease is always used as a reason for stopping all meat imports); suspected use of child labour; onerous or slow or virtually impossible customs inspections (Japan used to take weeks to pass a single automobile); advertising campaigns and cultural practices to convince people not to buy foreign products; etc

[Allen]

No doubt there are better ways for fairness and this should have been addressed 50 years ago but was not.

We have a president who is the first one to try to balance things. He only has 4 years to get things done with constant interference and obstacles from the type people who are largely responsible for this mess in the first place. Depending upon the mid-term elections he may only have 2 years to accomplish most of what he wants to do.

China is the main one squawking. They have become dependent upon U.S. dollars to build their military to use against the U.S. and of course are now making threats. To really be fair a balance with them would result not in a a 0 - 0 tariff but a lopsided tariff against them as they have had against us for so many years till things "equalize out".

I use to say "coffee and bananas" were the only things America needed to import. Now I would say "coffee, bananas, lithium (why Trump wants Greenland) and circuit boards" are all we actually need to import and what I've heard the works are in the making for a plant here to manufacture circuit boards and other electronics that we have been farming out overseas.

We have lithium deposits here but it isn't enough to fill the demand of going all electric. We buy a lot of lithium from China. With the accusation of Greenland we could move more quickly to completely cut off China and not be dependent upon them.

Oil, with Trump, we were self sufficient and exporting it. Now, we are importing it.

Japan is little more than a grossly overpopulated island with little to no natural resources yet they are one of the largest exporters of manufactured goods. Countries like America and others sell them raw materials such as wood, steel and plastic only to buy it back in the finished stage of cars, toys, etc. We and others have done nothing but bypassed our own labor force in doing this.

I wonder how all those foreign auto plants built here are going to pan out. They ship over parts made in their country and the final assembly is done here. All the profits go back to their countries. I wonder if these plants are going to be considered an import or an export. Most politicians welcomed this but all it did was put our own workers out of a job. Sure, they hire some American help but it is only for the low paying jobs.

We sent a lot of our auto manufacturing to Canada. At first I assumed it was for cheaper labor and to avoid the labor unions but they are there and so the pay scales for workers is going to be about the same so what did that accomplish? I can see some of these manufacturing jobs returning soon.

Things have gotten so bad there is no painless way out but w/o doing something America could be held hostage for goods and even food by allowing other countries to continue to take over.

[lyman]

If you do a little research you will find that a lot of American goods are heavily tariffed and have been for a very long while

And no one cared until Trump


Just more media manipulation

[Mark in Ottawa]

Regarding auto production in Canada, the original auto pact (pre NAFTA) was intended to eliminate the tariffs on autos between Canada and the, increase efficiency and lower costs. Prior to the pact, most vehicles sold in Canada were assembled in Canada and only a small percentage were assembled in the USA. The effect was that Canada produced small numbers of a lot of different models. After the pact, Canada produced much larger numbers of a smaller number of models, exporting most of them to the USA but then importing about an equal number from the USA. This was and is beneficial to both countries. If Trump's tariffs close down the export of cars from Canada to the USA, we will end up back where we were 50 years ago with one big difference: Canadians will almost certainly stop buying vehicles made in the USA but instead of only buying ones assembled in Canada, they will now buy vehicles assembled in Asia or Europe. That option was not available 50 years ago.

Bottom line here is that Trump and his advisors have no understanding of the way the integrated North American auto industry functions and all that he is going to do is mess up a well functioning system and increase costs for everybody.