Photo: Retiring Guy
Headline: Washington Post, 5/8/2019
Arnold Kamler writes in the Washington Post:
The administration’s abrupt policy shifts alone have caused damage. When Trump first threatened in September to increase tariffs to 25 percent, everyone — including our competitors — wanted to get their products to the United States before the levies took effect. Ocean freight companies lifted their prices dramatically. The administration eventually backed off, but we’d absorbed more than $1.5 million in additional freight costs, which we couldn’t recoup. Running a business requires adapting to adversity; these sudden changes came like a punch to the gut.
Then, last Sunday, Trump renewed his threat to increase tariffs to 25 percent in five days — a ridiculously short time frame that left us little time to react. The higher tariffs went into effect on Friday, after a last round of talks failed on Thursday night. I don’t belong to either political party, and I’ve voted for candidates from both. I understand very well that China has been cheating in all kinds of trade situations, from state subsidies to cybertheft. But when the government levies tariffs, we Americans are the ones who end up paying. In fact, the U.S. economy suffered a net loss of $7.8 billion last year because of the trade war, according to a recent National Bureau of Economic Research study. Workers in Republican counties have shouldered most of those costs, mostly in the form of retaliatory tariffs against the agricultural sector. [emphasis added]
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