Trust me folks, Trump has absolutely no plan for use of tariffs
Henry Beall
President Donald Trump made promises during his campaign to better protect American manufacturing through the use of tariffs. So far, his plan has not been a consistent one.
This week, I was really unsure of what to write about. I was considering writing about Rory McIlroy’s Masters victory, which was so amazing, or maybe I was going to write about the state of college football as exemplified by Nico Iamaleava leaving Tennessee.
Instead, I will be writing about tariffs … again. I didn’t want to, and I genuinely mean that. Tariffs can be pretty tedious, and I am already quite bored of them because everyone from Jim Cramer to anyone not living under a rock won’t shut up about them.
Tariffs are inescapable, but I don’t l-u-v writing about them, unless I see a reason to.
A reason I found in The Paper recently. Sen. Warren Daniel and Rep. Hugh Blackwell spoke at the annual legislative breakfast, sponsored by the Burke County Chamber of Commerce at the Morganton Community House, about a week ago.
What they had to say about tariffs was quite disappointing.
From Warren Daniel: “I think that’s [tariffs] a[re a] really complex issue, and I’m not an economist that has studied this for 20 years, but I think one question you should ask yourself is, if tariffs aren’t effective, why is every country using them against us?”
First, not every country is using tariffs against us. That is not true. In fact, since 1994, the United States, Mexico, and Canada have had some sort of agreement (NAFTA, then USMCA) that reduced tariffs and other trade barriers to effectively zero, except for in hyper-specific situations.
The EU imposed, on average, a 1.46% tariff on the United States, with the only major flare ups occurring during Donald Trump’s first trade war, Japan 1.9%, the UK/Australia 3%, and China 7.5%.
The U.S. rate for all of these countries, except for China, was 3.3%. Every country uses tariffs to a small degree, usually very small, because they really gum up the works. A 3% tariff is like raising a basketball goal from 10 feet to 10 feet 2 inches.
But stuff has been changing quickly, and this really brings me to my actual point. Both Daniel and Blackwell implied or stated that there was some form of plan from our current administration on tariffs. I promise this is not me just being a raging liberal: There is no plan.
Let me take you through a quick timeline of events:
Donald Trump talks about tariffs throughout his campaign, and he positions them as an effort to bring back American manufacturing. This is wildly unrealistic, as you can’t just make up for decades of educational mismanagement and a wise selling of cheap manufacturing capabilities in exchange for higher standards of living by bullying the First and Second World fiscally.
Donald Trump makes some weird threats, and announces a “Liberation Day,” (from what?) where he will announce a new world order of tariffs. The Wall Street Journal reports that the administration was arguing internally about how necessary tariffs were up to a few hours before the presentation.
Donald Trump imposes a slew of tariffs on nearly every country, and the backlash is massive, with many of his wealthiest supporters aggressively speaking out against him in public. The stock market craters, entering bear market territory (down 20%+ from previous highs).
Donald Trump backs down to a 10% tariff on every country for 90 days and increases the Chinese tariffs to 145% to make up for our trade deficit, which exhibits a critical misunderstanding of basic economics, but who cares?
And that’s where we are now. I am telling you, and I promise that you can trust me, that there is no plan.
Donald Trump doesn’t understand tariffs, and he doesn’t care. The people around Donald Trump might understand tariffs (Peter Navarro definitely doesn’t because he’s a moron), but they also don’t care.
To rebuild American manufacturing up to what it was in the mid 20th century, an already overly-glamourized period of America’s history, the economy would have to shrink wildly and completely re-orient over a period of decades.
There is good, healthy manufacturing that is not predicated solely on the cheapness of the manufacturing process, and there is bad manufacturing that would never work here in America.
Ignoring that this scenario is totally unrealistic, why would we want to bring iPhone manufacturing here? A Chinese worker making a phone rakes in $1 per hour. If Apple moved its entire manufacturing capabilities to the United States from China and somehow convinced tens of thousands to work for the minimum wage, your phone would cost seven times more, minimum.
Why is this necessary at all? The simple answer is that it isn’t. We are a service economy. We do things and get paid for it by other people with money.
We used to be a manufacturing country, and then we grew up, got richer, and now we pay other people to assemble stuff for us 10 times cheaper than we could.
This use of tariffs is a total joke, there is no plan, and any politician who tells you differently is laughably uneducated.
Henry Beall is a columnist for The Paper. He is a senior at Freedom High School.
