Get Ready to Pay More and Have Less
If we tax all imports we can't simply make substitutes, someone will have to pay more, oh and CLIMATE CHANGE goes on.
People Still Believe Trump’s Hucksterism - Trade
I would not say we live in a country of shared delusion, since many people are wising up, but it is amazing to read about say farmers or builders who are surprised many of their imports/inputs cost more. President Trump is insisting that Walmart and Amazon, two huge retailers, “eat” the cost of tariffs. Now, we were told by the conman-in-chief that foreigners would “eat” the cost of tariffs, but apparently that is not so. Well, if retailers and companies don’t pay the tariffs - and companies are not in the habit of operating at a loss - then all of us will pay the cost of tariffs. We’re not even really feeling the full costs yet, since the costs are yet to roll down the supply chain, but people are leery. Some people foolishly believe we can also just substitute American goods.
Let’s consider our relations with Canada. If we tax their lumber, building houses will be more expensive. Trump’s Congress (they follow him slavishly) also wants to “sell” 500,000 acres of Federal land, wilderness in many cases. We could get some of this land and presuming it is not just given away to Trump cronies, there may be more lumber to cut, or places to build houses, but this is no substitute. We as a nation are “out” hundreds of thousands of acres of land we now already own, and if this land is sold we’ll have buy that lumber, gravel or building lots from whomever is fortunate enough to be in on Trump’s grift. Nothing is free. Do you think this “American” lumber will be cheaper? Markets usually don’t work that way. Get ready to pay up.
There’s a bigger tariff of Canadian aluminum (pretty much all imported aluminum). Can’t we just make more aluminum here? Making aluminum requires electricity and lots of it. America needs electricity. We need it to power AI and data centers, for air conditioning against the terrible heat we are about to face this summer. There is a concept in economics called elasticity - simply it measures how much demand, or supply, respond to a price change (or vice versa). We know, based on the bungled documents Trump People produced on “Liberation Day,” that he or his people do not understand elasticity, but let’s just say the supply of electricity is not very elastic. Some big tech companies have even been exploring building their out nuclear power plants for reliable electricity for their cloud systems. Otherwise, our grid can be very shaky on very hot or very cold days. We even have to try to get electricity from Canada sometimes (yep, those people). So, anything that has aluminum in it is going to cost more, everything from Ford F-150s to Reynolds Wrap. Thank Donald.
People Still Believe Trump’s Hucksterism - Climate Change
Get ready for a hot year. The first four months of the year were quite warm, coming on the heels of three of the hottest years in modern human (Earth) history. Our new administration though no longer even wants to keep data related to climate change. Our Agriculture Secretary, Brooke Rollins, says “we” no longer believe that climate change “crud” anymore (she said this on Fox News), and hence a USDA program that tracks greenhouse gas emissions has been cancelled. The Trump administration is trying to erase common sets of historical records - agreed upon data - so conditions cannot be judged. Another thing climate deniers have begun using as a rhetorical trick is to ask people how much carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere. It is about 0.042% of the atmosphere. That is almost twice as much as in the preindustrial atmosphere. It does’t matter that it is a seemingly small number, it is a number that shouldn’t be doubling. If a MAGAot asks you how much CO2 is in the atmosphere say, “about twice as much as there used to be.” Glaciers around the world shouldn’t be melting and people should not be dying from heat and wildfires and smoke/particulate pollution.
The Trump/MAGA people have crafted a slew of “arguments” and stock phrases like “reciprocal tariffs” to obscure the laughingstock of a country and world they want us to have. Push back. Howard Luttnick, Trump’s oafish Commerce Secretary now all but admits this is not reciprocal tariff. On TV he cited the UK as an example: the UK does not have a trade surplus with the US but will still have a 10% baseline tariff. The reason apparently is that the UK is not America, although the UK is also in decline economically. Trump is weak in his conduct of foreign policy, he and his family is on the take, and many people are going to wise up this year ahead.
NB - I plan to get back to writing twice a month.