It will suck on both sides, but the majority of American households can weather a $2-4k blow over the next year as supply chains react.
Congress stepping in to exclude Canada and Mexico and the NAFTA exemption cushions the blow significantly.
Most of Latin America being placed at the lower end of the announcement means manufacturers who used to be competitive until China Shock set around 2014-16 can be cost competitive again.
Other large markets like India, UK, and Vietnam are negotiating as well and India expects as Bilateral Trade Agreement to be closed by Aug-Oct.
Half of Americans say they live paycheck to paycheck, so no - the majority of households will not be able to survive for long if they have to spend an extra few thousand to stay where they are today.
Those that can will be cutting spending, which will ripple across the rest of the economy.
There's no sign that negotiation is even possible, never mind likely.
One tell is that tariffs have been applied to the Heard and McDonald Islands, which are inhabited by penguins and produce no imports or exports.
These are not the actions of a rational administration.
Mexican cartels just got handed the biggest payday of their wildest dreams. 30% profit on the entire global economy if only they can get it past the border.
Strangely, I was thinking about this yesterday, that smuggling now became profitable :) It used to be and still is very profitable in some countries with goods that attract big tariffs like cigarettes. Gray markets will boom.
>Half of Americans say they live paycheck to paycheck, so no - the majority of households will not be able to survive for long if they have to spend an extra few thousand to stay where they are today
What do you think the death toll will be? A majority of households not surviving would put it over 160 million.
$4k per capita (not household) loss would put the US in 2022 territory [1].
Holy bad faith bs from someone who pretends they're a straight shooter. “...the death toll.” What a trash response to Americans suffering.
So kind of you to volunteer that the poorest among us have nothing and should be happy about it.
You admit this is a $4k hit that Congress didn’t pass. Guess after all your talk here, you don’t actually believe in the Constitution or separation of powers just “I should be able to do what I want with power.”
$4k no biggie, right? From my experience, it just means when things wear out, they don’t get replaced. So shoes for kids get stretched to last longer. Car maintenance gets skipped. (You can judge a bad president by the number of broken-down cars on the side of the road.). It’s food not bought, medical/dental care skipped, rent coming up short.
The real death toll won’t be a one-time body count. It’ll be slow and quiet: worse health, more homelessness, more suicides. And for what? So we can LARP like we’re rebuilding American industry without giving businesses the capital, labor, or time to do it?
This isn’t strategy. It’s cruelty pretending to be policy.
Nah, you're just the one OK with Trump unilaterally imposing tariffs, something that the Constitution says only Congress can do. And like your failure to address that point in your response, caring about the Constitution isn't a thing to you.
> the majority of households will not be able to survive for long if they have to spend an extra few thousand to stay where they are today.
The median American household has an income of around $78,000 [0]. They can survive the blowback. The Trump admin on the other hand will not.
As a Sullivan, Raimondo, and IRA supporting Dem, it's a win-win for me. Harsher policies against China have been enacted which will not be rolled back (just like how the Biden admin let Trump 1 era tariffs remain) and it will cause a severe blow as midterm fundraising season has started. The NY by-election for Stefanik's seat itself proved that the tariffs and DOGE have made plenty of purple to light red seats vulnerabile.
The whole trump thing went from prospects of economic boom to "the median household is enough wealthy to tolerate the price increase" really, really quick
I like how you talk about them like there is any "game" involved. Neither individual knows what the hell he's doing. Just greedy self-serving bulls in a china shop.
You do understand that means half of all American households make less than 78k? If your reasoning is based on the upper half of wealthiest Americans, it ignores virtually all the most vulnerable.
They call it blowback because 'increased homelessness, suicides, kids not getting new shoes as they grow, people having teeth pulled instead of dental work' and 'you will have nothing and be happy' make their policy look bad.
Then later they will make fun of the people that have missing teeth because they chose food for their kids over dental work and call those people trash.
> but the majority of American households can weather a $2-4k blow over the next year
- Wasn’t this the administration that campaigned on lowering costs of goods? Now, not even a half-year in, the narrative is “Sorry, deal with it, while we chaotically disrupt global markets.”
- The administration is apparently intent on a strategy that builds the U.S. manufacturing base. That’s not a one-year horizon, if ever.
Manufacturing isn't returning to the US due to these tariffs.
Just like before the tariffs, the US is still too expensive.
On the other hand, it has killed cost-competitiveness for Chinese exports directly from China or via transshipment from Vietnam.
The tariff regime has now made Latin America (Brazil, Colombia), Turkiye, Philippines, parts of the EU (Poland, Czechia, Romania), and India cost competitive. And NAFTA/USMCA exemptions still remain and this was something Congress pushed back HARD on to ensure.
> Manufacturing isn't returning to the US due to these tariffs.
Even if it did, who cares? It wouldn't make anything less expensive or better and unemployment was already basically as close to zero as it will ever get. If wages go up that would just increase inflation more.
I can't figure out what they even imagined this was going to accomplish.
> Manufacturing isn't returning to the US due to these tariffs.
Even if it did, is it even desirable?
Countries that actually tried to keep manufacturing beyond its usefulness typically punch beneath their weight, such as the case of Germany.
The US lost manufacturing because it was heavily automated and those jobs don't pay really well. They are great for poor countries, because working in a factory sweatshop is better than plowing fields in rural areas, but advanced economies eventually grow beyond that.
The US, being the most advanced economy in the world, transitioned a long time ago into a finance and service economy. It's kind of fascinating (viewing from the outside) that it want to revert to a more rudimentary economy, and there are people applauding that.
> Countries that actually tried to keep manufacturing beyond its usefulness typically punch beneath their weight, such as the case of Germany.
Can you explain to me how Germany is punching below their weight?
Like, I personally think that having manufacturing in multiple places is good for resiliency reasons at the very least.
> The US lost manufacturing because it was heavily automated and those jobs don't pay really well. They are great for poor countries, because working in a factory sweatshop is better than plowing fields in rural areas, but advanced economies eventually grow beyond that.
This is a complete myth. The US lost manufacturing because capital controls were removed, and capital went looking for new margins. Like, all of Microsoft's English customer service and technical documentation were in Ireland in the 90's. Is that because Irish people have comparative advantage in these fields? No, it's because wages were super super low compared to the US. We used to have a bunch of clothing factories too, because we were cheap.
Fundamentally, stuff actually needs to be made if you want a modern society. You can outsource that to cheaper countries/Asia for a while, but it's not gonna end well. Like, a large proportion of the population are not cut out to be tech or finance professionals, and if you outsource all the factories that they could have worked at, then they'll get really depressed and angry and vote for Brexit/Trump/Le Pen/AfD.
And given that most of the rich west are democracies, you can't just pretend these people don't exist.
> Congress stepping in to exclude Canada and Mexico and the NAFTA exemption cushions the blow significantly.
I know the senate voted this through. But it still has to pass the house doesn't it? I doubt it will even get to be voted on with Mike Johnson as speaker.
The expanded child tax credit was ~3k per year. It absolutely clobbered child poverty rates. This sort of delta in expenses can change a family's fortune significantly.
It's too bad that INS v Chadha essentially gutted the National Emergencies Act, which could allow Congress to end some/all of the tariffs. In it's original form, the NEA allowed Congress to pass a concurrent resolution to terminate an emergency without needing the president's signature. Now it has to be a joint resolution, which can be vetoed by the president, and what president is going to sign off on the termination of an emergency they themselves declared?
And, of course, all those Americans who were already poor and are now even poorer will have the extra time and money to start businesses and manufacturing lines. Especially with the 30% increase on prices for all the machinery and raw goods they may need to import.
Congress stepping in to exclude Canada and Mexico and the NAFTA exemption cushions the blow significantly.
Most of Latin America being placed at the lower end of the announcement means manufacturers who used to be competitive until China Shock set around 2014-16 can be cost competitive again.
Other large markets like India, UK, and Vietnam are negotiating as well and India expects as Bilateral Trade Agreement to be closed by Aug-Oct.