#3. a. Blue

Jamie Cartwright posted on 10-7-2024

Kevin Couhig’s experience not withstanding. Cost of the tariffs are largely born by the importer and the consumers. Anecdotally, for some of the components that make up some of the products we buy came from China, and our costs for the finished product went up (the manufacturer passed it on to us). When we found alternative sourcing – the initial components actually still came from China, just by way of another country first.

Here’s an economic study of the effects:

https://www.nber.org/papers/w26610

Tariffs are generally harmful to the overall economy. There may be reasons to do them, if you want to protect emerging industries – which is what Biden is now doing. Or if you want to punish a bad faith trading partner – which is what Trump did (and I agree that China should be confronted, but Trump used a sledge hammer instead of a knife).

Again, Trump inherited a goldilocks economy (low inflation, low unemployment, solid job growth and consistent GDP growth), and he squandered it with tax cuts and a poorly executed trade war.