More tariffs are on the way.
President Donald Trump’s administration announced Friday it has increased tariffs on more than $200 billion worth of Chinese imports to 25 percent. This announcement follows last year’s decision to implement 10 percent tariffs on the goods.
Though a large segment of the products impacted by the tariff are retail goods, raw metals and ores also are found on the list of goods. Additionally, Trump told reported Thursday that the U.S. also is considering imposing new 25 percent tariffs on $325 billion other Chinese goods that are not currently taxed, the Wall Street Journal reports.
“I’m different than a lot of people,” said Trump. “I happen to think the tariffs for our country are very powerful.”
Those beliefs were echoed on social media, where Trump touted the tariffs as beneficial for U.S. farmers and manufacturing businesses who choose to focus exclusively on U.S. production.
Tariffs will make our Country MUCH STRONGER, not weaker. Just sit back and watch! In the meantime, China should not renegotiate deals with the U.S. at the last minute. This is not the Obama Administration, or the Administration of Sleepy Joe, who let China get away with “murder!”
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 10, 2019
Build your products in the United States and there are NO TARIFFS!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 10, 2019
Despite Trump’s optimism, many within the trucking industry like the Motor & Equipment Manufacturers Association (MEMA) remain cautious toward tariffs as a method to eliminating a trade imbalance.
MEMA supported a congressional effort to implement tariff reform legislation earlier this year, writing such legislation is “critically needed in order to ensure a proper weighing of the overall national interest before tariffs or quotas go into effect. It is clear that these overall interests were not properly weighed in the case of steel and aluminum and there are proposals for future use in the autos sector that make this need for a balanced weighing of interests even more apparent.”
Speaking at the recent CCJ Spring Symposium, Donald Broughton, principal and managing partner, Broughton Capital, added, “The biggest threat to our economic security is a trade war. A tariff is a tax. And if this goes through and if (Trump) is not just bluffing and not just negotiating, he has just put a 25 percent tax on all those goods that we are consuming. And that has bad economic ramifications for us and the Chinese.”
