Trump promised voters tariffs are a panacea for the economy, but Walmart finance chief John David Rainey warned they will be inflationary for customers.
Realistically though, that’s how tariffs just work. With products costing more, theoretically that should drive demand down and eventually lead to fewer imports. Of course, if there’s still no competing product or the product is a basic necessity, then it’ll likely just result in people paying more.
Working tariffs make importing goods so expensive that manufacturing them nationally is viable. There are definitely areas where tariffs make sense, e.g. you have or want to build an industry that’s competing against a subsidized industry from another country. Tariffs are one way to help with that.
But we all know that’s way too much thought for him, which probably boiled down to “China bad”… which I’m not necessarily disagreeing with fully… but for reasons that tariffs aren’t necessarily an answer to.
Realistically though, that’s how tariffs just work. With products costing more, theoretically that should drive demand down and eventually lead to fewer imports. Of course, if there’s still no competing product or the product is a basic necessity, then it’ll likely just result in people paying more.
Working tariffs make importing goods so expensive that manufacturing them nationally is viable. There are definitely areas where tariffs make sense, e.g. you have or want to build an industry that’s competing against a subsidized industry from another country. Tariffs are one way to help with that.
But we all know that’s way too much thought for him, which probably boiled down to “China bad”… which I’m not necessarily disagreeing with fully… but for reasons that tariffs aren’t necessarily an answer to.