News / trade-war
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1 min read
Down Thirty Percent and Winning
Read more . . . →Port Milwaukee’s steel volumes are down thirty percent this year. Duluth-Superior, the biggest tonnage mover on the Great Lakes, dropped twenty-five percent. Canadian-flagged vessels calling on American ports fell thirty-seven percent. This is what a trade war looks like when it stops being a press conference and starts being a paycheck. Trump slapped fifty percent tariffs on Canadian goods in August. Canada hit back with twenty billion in retaliatory tariffs on steel, agricultural equipment, and paper. The president called it winning. The dock workers watching ships not arrive probably have a different word for it. The Great Lakes shipping corridor...
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Thirty Billion and a Soccer Ball
Read more . . . →The US and China just released their big tariff deal. Seventy-seven items get relief. The list includes fireworks, Christmas ornaments, tableware, and soccer balls. That’s the headline from the summit: you can buy a cheaper soccer ball now. Meanwhile, tariffs have cost the average American household over $2,500 this year. Congratulations, you got about nine percent back. Mostly in ornaments. This is the cycle. Break something big, fix something small, hold a press conference. The Supreme Court ruled the IEEPA tariffs unconstitutional back in February. Didn’t matter. Trump kept collecting and now wants a standing ovation for agreeing to stop...
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Four Days Until Your Whisky Disappears
Read more . . . →In four days, it becomes illegal to import Canadian whisky into the United States. Also banned: Canadian beer, wine, vodka, cider, motorcycles, and whey protein. Trump signed the executive orders as retaliation for Canada’s retaliatory tariffs, which were retaliation for his original tariffs, which were retaliation for Canada having the nerve to exist next door. The circle of punishment lands, as it always does, on the person holding the receipt. This is what a trade war looks like when one side runs out of ideas. You can’t negotiate your way to a win, so you take the other country’s beer...
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1 min read
China got Boeing planes. You got a $1,500 tax bill.
Read more . . . →The whole sales pitch was that China was going to pay. Not you — China. Tariffs were going to force them to capitulate, manufacturing was coming home, and American workers were going to win big. What actually happened: tariffs hit 145%, the US shed over 100,000 manufacturing jobs, small manufacturers watched their profit margins drop 24%, and the average household is out $1,500 this year in higher prices. Not China. You. So Trump flew to Beijing. First US president to visit China in nearly a decade. He came back with soybeans and Boeing planes. China agreed to buy American agricultural...
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