But there's something excessive (dare I say unhinged) about the constant predictions of doom and the tragic anecdotes about failing farmers and struggling businesses.
The heightened tariffs against China — which now place a 25 percent levy on $200 billion worth of different consumer and manufacturing products — are expected to cost the average U.S. family $831 per year. Add in the recent threat of a 5 percent tariff on goods from Mexico and family budgets will have to absorb another $130 or so of rising prices, for a total annual tariff cost of around $1,000 per household. That's not nothing, to be sure, but consider that it's roughly the same size as the average tax benefit households got from the 2018 Republican tax cuts, which polls suggest many Americans didn't even notice.
Yes, it’s still possible the economic harm from Trump’s trade tiff will someday explode — if Trump boosts Mexican tariffs to stratospheric levels or pursues future tariffs against the E.U., or if China makes drastic moves such as cutting off access to rare earth minerals and blacklisting major U.S. corporations. But there’s a reason China hasn’t already retaliated with maximum force despite its threats: It’s costly. Blocking sales of rare earth minerals, for instance, could allow smaller suppliers to widen their hold on the market (as happened in 2010, the last time China tried it.) More generally, Trump has been in office for two and half years now, with plenty of tariffs to show for it, and these kinds of spiraling costs just haven’t materialized.
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opini...tiff-trump-s-mexico-china-tariffs-ncna1013646
The heightened tariffs against China — which now place a 25 percent levy on $200 billion worth of different consumer and manufacturing products — are expected to cost the average U.S. family $831 per year. Add in the recent threat of a 5 percent tariff on goods from Mexico and family budgets will have to absorb another $130 or so of rising prices, for a total annual tariff cost of around $1,000 per household. That's not nothing, to be sure, but consider that it's roughly the same size as the average tax benefit households got from the 2018 Republican tax cuts, which polls suggest many Americans didn't even notice.
Yes, it’s still possible the economic harm from Trump’s trade tiff will someday explode — if Trump boosts Mexican tariffs to stratospheric levels or pursues future tariffs against the E.U., or if China makes drastic moves such as cutting off access to rare earth minerals and blacklisting major U.S. corporations. But there’s a reason China hasn’t already retaliated with maximum force despite its threats: It’s costly. Blocking sales of rare earth minerals, for instance, could allow smaller suppliers to widen their hold on the market (as happened in 2010, the last time China tried it.) More generally, Trump has been in office for two and half years now, with plenty of tariffs to show for it, and these kinds of spiraling costs just haven’t materialized.
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opini...tiff-trump-s-mexico-china-tariffs-ncna1013646