Tag: Trump trade war

Trump announces new $16 billion aid package for American farmers hit in trade war

NOTE:  We’ve never seen a trade war where the winning party has to bail out those damaged by those federal policies for a second time in one year.

President Trump, flanked by more than a dozen U.S. farmers at the White House, on Thursday announced a $16 billion farm aid package to offset losses from the U.S. trade war with China.

Trump told the farmers in attendance, including an Idaho potato farmer wearing a red “Make Potatoes Great Again” cap, that he was “honored to have done this for you.”

“This support for farmers will be paid for by the billions of dollars the Treasury takes in” from China, Trump said. He said it will keep America’s “cherished” farms thriving.

View the complete May 23 article by Laura Reiley, Colby Itkowitz and Annie Gowen on The Washington Post website here.

Watch: Steve Mnuchin squirms after Iowa Democrat corners him on the negative impact of Trump’s tariffs in her state

Trump Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin on Wednesday had a tough time defending President Donald Trump’s tariffs under tough questioning from Rep. Cindy Axne (D-IA).

During a hearing at the House Financial Services Committee, Axne asked Mnuchin pointed questions about the impact that tariffs were having on American businesses and consumers — and Mnuchin at one point even tried to deny that tariffs were taxes.

After Mnuchin repeatedly dodged her questions about whether businesses would most likely pass on increased production costs to American consumers thanks to Trump’s tariffs, Axne stopped him and told him he was not giving her a “straight answer.”

“Do you agree that American consumers will be paying more as a result of these tariffs?” she asked.

Watch the video below: Continue reading “Watch: Steve Mnuchin squirms after Iowa Democrat corners him on the negative impact of Trump’s tariffs in her state”

Dark clouds hang over Trump’s trade war

The president is heading into a reelection battle with his promise of challenging China unfulfilled.

President Donald Trump is doing everything he can to soften the economic blow of his trade battle with China, doling out billions of dollars in farmer bailouts and telling Americans that the Chinese are paying the tariffs he’s slapped on U.S. importers.

It’ll be a tough trick to execute, especially if Trump can’t cut a deal and the fight escalates to a full-scale trade war. All available evidence so far suggests it is American businesses and consumers — not the Chinese — paying Trump’s tariffs. And the farm bailout is running into political and logistical headaches.

If the president moves ahead with 25 percent tariffs on everything China exports to the United States, it could amount to a tax hike of more than $2,000 on the average American family, swamping the reduction they won from Trump’s signature legislative achievement — the 2017 tax law.

View the complete May 20 article by Ben White on the Politico website here.

The Trade War President

The Chinese haven’t blinked at Trump’s hardball trade tactics – and that’s worrying farmers, politicians and businesses.

FARMERS ARE FRUSTRATED. Automobile workers are edgy. Consumers are bracing for cost increases. And the nation poised this year to eclipse the United States as the world’s biggest consumer market is refusing to budge as the Trump administration tries to get China to play fair on trade.

This was not the sort of wartime leader most presidents expect to be. But Donald Trump, praised by his acolytes (and himself) as a master negotiator and derided by his critics as more bully than bully pulpit orator, has gotten the country in a good old-fashioned trade war. And it’s one that may produce no economic or political winner.

Lawmakers in both parties have been irritated for some time over what they see as unfair trade practices by China, where there is more state control over the economy. The United States suffers from an enormous trade deficit with China, importing such items as electronics, clothing and manufactured goods. One exception is agriculture: The U.S. exports more to China than it imports. The Trump administration and other critics have also accused China of intellectual property theft and a variety of unfair trade practices.

View the complete May 17 article by Susan Milligan on The U.S. News and World Report website here.

Companies warn Trump trade war is about to hit consumers

U.S. companies are speaking out against President Trump‘s escalating trade war with China, with major players such as Walmart saying tariffs are forcing them to raise prices on consumer goods for Americans.

The price hikes could complicate things for Trump as the 2020 campaign picks up. The president has repeatedly asserted that China, and not U.S. consumers, would pay the price of the trade war.

“There are some places where, as we get tariffs, we will take prices up,” Walmart Chief Financial Officer Brett Biggs said Thursday in an earnings call.

View the complete May 17 article by Niv Elis on The Hill website here.

Trump administration cracks down on giant Chinese tech firm, escalating clash with Beijing

The Trump administration on Wednesday slapped a major Chinese firm with an extreme penalty that makes it very difficult for it to do business with any U.S. company, a dramatic escalation of the economic clash between the two nations.

The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security said it was adding Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. to its “Entity List,” known to some as the “death penalty.”

This listing makes it virtually impossible for companies to survive once U.S. firms are discouraged from doing business with them. The Commerce Department said it had reached this decision because Huawei “is engaged in activities that are contrary to U.S. national security or foreign policy interest.”

View the complete May 16 article by Damian Paletta, Ellen Nakashima and David Lynch on The Washington Post website here.

Trump’s Malignant Trade War Reflects His Economic Ignorance

Larry Kudlow, Donald Trump’s chief economic adviser, understands that tariffs on Chinese imports are a tax paid by American companies and consumers — a point his boss refuses to acknowledge. The president’s weird insistence that “China” pays the tariffs reflects not just his reluctance to take responsibility for tax increases but his longstanding, sincere and fundamentally mistaken views on international trade — views that do not bode well for the outcome of his trade war.

“Tariffs are NOW being paid to the United States by China of 25% on 250 Billion Dollars worth of goods & products,” Trump tweeted last Friday. As Kudlow conceded in a Fox News interview on Sunday, that is not how tariffs work. U.S. importers pay the tariffs, and they respond by reducing their profit margins, raising prices or both.

A recent study of Trump’s tariffs by economists at Princeton, Columbia and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York noted that, in 2018, “The U.S. experienced substantial increases in the prices of intermediates and final goods, dramatic changes to its supply-chain network, reductions in availability of imported varieties, and complete passthrough of the tariffs into domestic prices of imported goods.” By the end of the year, they estimated, the tariffs were costing Americans $3 billion a month in added taxes and another $1.4 billion a month in lost efficiency.

View the complete May 14 article by Jacob Sullum on the National Memo website here.

Trump is taxing Americans to support farmers struggling from his trade war

To hear President Trump tell it, the calculus is simple.

Yes, farmers are feeling the pain of Trump’s trade war. China retaliated against tariffs imposed by the United States by adding tariffs of their own to American-made products, including crops. On Monday, soybean futures hit their lowest price in a decade.

But, Trump argues, those tariffs are “being paid to the United States by China of 25% on 250 Billion Dollars worth of goods & products.” Farmers, he claims, will end up being the “biggest beneficiaries of what is happening now” because either China will soon resume buying American crops or the United States “will be making up the difference” using “the massive Tariffs being paid to the United States.” Win-win.

The problems with that equation are twofold. First, China isn’t paying all of the tariffs and much of the increased cost is being incurred by American consumers. Second, we can look at the support being given to farmers in another light: Trump is taxing consumers to bolster farmers, a core part of his political base.

View the complete May 14 article by Philip Bump on The Washington Post website here.

‘Chairman Mao’: Trump accused of ‘socialism’ after announcing $15 billion payoff plan to ‘our great patriot farmers’ as tariff war explodes

President Donald Trump continued his new habit of daily massive tweetstorms on Tuesday, starting at 6:15 AM and again focusing on his failed China tariffs “policy.” Trump has levied huge tariffs on goods coming into the U.S. from China – tariffs paid by Americans – and China in response announced it will impose tariffs on U.S. goods going in to China, escalating Trump’s tariff war.

As USA Today’s G. William Hoagland, who grew up on a farm, writes, “agriculture and farm families in the bread basket states have borne the brunt of the trade war.”

That war has spanned two years now, and it’s crushing many farms.

View the complete May 14 article by David Badash of the New Civil Rights Movement on the AlterNet website here.

Trump urges Americans not to buy from American companies because of his own tariffs

He really doesn’t understand just how bad his own plan is.

President Donald Trump kicked Monday morning off with a series of tweets defending his new tariffs against China. His latest tactic is to urge Americans not to buy products from American companies if they manufacture in China.

The way tariffs work is that American businesses pay the fees for bringing in goods manufactured in China, which they then pass on to consumers. The president reasons, however, that Americans can easily avoid these increased costs.

Trump said there is “no reason” for U.S. consumers to pay the tariffs, before claiming that companies inside China would soon move to other countries. In the meantime, Trump said people should just buy products from inside the United States.

View the complete May 13 article by Zack Ford on the ThinkProgress website here.