That’s what some commentator on NPR said, too. Apparently he’s been pro-tariff for decades.
This. So very this.
He’ll deflect blame on the radical left Democrat-Communist-Fascist encouraging stochastic terrorism and eventually start arrest prominent critics such as political figures and journalist.
The OP themself has introduced ambiguity about the farmer’s position by seemingly pronouncing a position the farmer has that farmer has not evinced anywhere in the text.
That is the point.
edit to add
meaning that’s the point I, myself, have been making. I don’t care about the point of the article. maybe that’s where you’re confused
I just reread the OP. The only thing that @Northern_Piper added was a satirical exclamation that farmer might conclude that the tariffs “Must be Biden’s fault!”
Everything else is right out of the article: most importantly the fact that the farmer couldn’t believe that he had to pay the tariffs because he was sure that they were the responsibility of the shipper (or the exporting country, which is Canada in this case).
Which is not at all how tariffs work.
Now where on Earth could the farmer have gotten the idea that the exporter or Canada was going to pay the tariffs?
Now to be fair, some economists might argue that exporters will be forced to lower their prices to counteract the tariffs so that their products will remain competitive. But that doesn’t work if there are no competitive products, or the cost of shipping the competive products exceeds the tariffs. And it would only apply to future contracts, not a contract already in place.
And there is no way an exporter can lower their prices to counteract the tariffs if the tariffs exceed 100%. Because math.
And even if an exporter did lower their prices, in no universe do they pay the tariffs. The tariffs aren’t collected until the goods enter the country, and they are assessed on the importer. The importer then either pays the tariffs, or the goods are impounded by Customs.
Or even 25%. When Trump originally floated this idea, I remember auto industry analysts saying that at that tariff rate, there is no way it would be possible for most of the industry to stay in business.
What did the OP say that wasn’t in the article, other than the obviously sarcastic quip about blaming Biden?
Well, the farmer is right about the possible scumminess and illegality of signing a contract and unilaterally abrogating it. However, the contract in question is not just the one the farmer refers to by the perpendicular pronoun. And he does not understand tariffs.
The Wall Street Journal had a disturbing editorial yesterday called “an even dumber idea than tariffs”. Columnist Joseph Sternberg writes this whole tariff idea comes in part because Trump was influenced by unorthodox economists such as Stephen Miran, Chairman of Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers. Of course, Trump has advocated for tariffs for forty years, having read somewhere about mercantilism four centuries ago.
Trumpist theory is that the global economy is deformed by countries like Germany and Japan that make policy decisions that suppress domestic consumption and boost exports. Since the global economy is a closed system, these export surpluses necessarily create import surpluses elsewhere like in the US. The flip side to trade deficits is capital flows. Trumpists see America’s historic role as providing safe assets which have been popular, and supplying this demand has furnished America’s trade deficit. US treasury bonds “become exported products that fuel the global trade system”. Miran thinks the problem is not that the US imports too much, but that the US is a reserve currency facilitating global growth by exporting treasury instruments.
His “solutions” include devaluing the greenback to revalue other currencies (the Mar-A-Lago accord), the US to get its own reserve of bonds held by other governments, and… putting a tax on the foreign owners of US securities. This “user fee” means other countries “could simply write cheques to the US” for the supposed privilege of holding American bonds.
The reason this is an atrocious idea is that enormous debt has been and remains politically popular in the US. Tax cuts will increase this. Other countries have been happy to buy US securities as long as the US does not default on payments but they have plenty of alternatives. A capital tax is a default since it is reneging on what US promised to pay investors. This will undermine the desirability of US assets even as their deficit spins out of control. Trump’s tariffs are a misguided form of protectionism to avoid making politically unpopular budget decisions. If he taxes treasury instruments for foreigners, Trump is going to crash the American economy.
In fact, the evidence of maximal markets just two months ago is strong evidence trade deficits are not the problem, even before rectio ad absurdum of the mathematical formula Trump used to calculate the tariffs of individual countries.
Taxing and defaulting on foreign investments will be a wonderful discouragement to any foreign country thinking of investing billions to build American factories because why should American interference with foreign investment stop there? Miran offered these solutions this month in a speech to the Hudson Institute in his official capacity.
Trump is wrong, and creating two problems where none actually existed. Americans import stuff because Americans want to buy it and American companies want to remake materials into pricier finished goods and sell those. The Americans who buy these things are not giving a single thought to foreigners who invest in bonds - and who accounted for 40% of the market in after the 2008 panic, but now only account for 16% of it (US government debt held outside of the federal reserve) since there are indeed many other places they can put their pounds and pesos.
Nowhere in the article does the farmer claim that he
The OP has jumped to that conclusion.
Where in the article does the farmer say, “I was assured by Donald Trump that Canada” would pay the tariffs? He doesn’t. If he did, it would be the great story of schadenfreude that the OP wishes it was, but alas it is not. Yes, the author points out Trump’s lies about tariffs, but what the farmer says — and the author makes sure to quote him twice as saying — is that it’s the contract that binds the Canadian firm to paying the tariff (however wrong that might be). And I’ll hazard a guess that the farmer never took the but, but, Trump says so! position, because if he did, it is practically unimaginable that the reporter wouldn’t have included such a juicy, juicy quote.
Moderating:
As this thread is decidedly political in nature, let’s move it to P&E.
Please see my post above.
So … Trump’s Treasury will basically start to issue negative-yield bonds?
What a genius idea!! They’ll be lining up all across the spectrum of OECD countries!!
/s
Not only genius, but very stable.
Wut???
The farmer is tremendously pissed off now that tariffs have kicked in and he suddenly learned how they actually work. Clearly, he didn’t expect to be paying them. Clearly, he didn’t understand how they worked. Clearly, he wasn’t worried about them before.
Why do you suppose the author of the article wrote the following words? …
President Donald Trump kicked off his long-promised trade war by applying levies to steel, aluminum, and goods from China, Canada, and Mexico soon after he took office—insisting, incorrectly, that foreign companies would pay the tariffs and that American growth would surge.
Why? Because Trump has been spewing that garbage for months now, and people like the farmer who are ignorant about tariffs and trade wars have been swallowing this lie like the suckers they are. Just because the author didn’t write, “and here’s exactly what Old Macdonald said, in these exact words …” doesn’t mean one can’t make an extremely obvious inference about what Old Macdonald believed and why he believed it. The OP was simply reflecting that inference. One can make perfectly valid logic inferences without needing everything spelled out in needlessly pedagocical direct quotes.
It’s exactly the same thing. If tariffs come into effect, and the farmer continues to pay exactly the same price for his imports as he did before, who do you suppose is paying the tariffs?
But of course that’s not how it works. The Canadian supplier is fulfilling exactly the terms of the agreed contract. What Donald Trump’s corrupt cabal does after the goods enter the US is not the supplier’s problem, and neither is the farmer’s lack of understanding.
Honestly, I don’t get why you’re so obsessed with finding fault with the OP when it’s a perfectly reasonable statement of the situation laid out in that article.
Trump has explicitly stated (of course counterfactually) “the other country pays, I think” - I saw it in news footage last week; I’d link to it, but I can’t find it amongst the morass of other drivel he’s on record saying.
I agree. I’d be pissed if there were an article “Saint Cad is a teacher who voted for Trump. Now pissed because the Depertment of Education is going bye-bye.” because
A) I voted for Harris.
B) I’d never reveal who I voted for as we have a secret ballot in this country.
C) I know many teacher that qualify for that headline. Go attribute it to them.
D) It seems like they manufactured a face for the leopard to eat.
Let’s pick any of you here that voted not Trump - would you be ok if they attributed you as voting for Trump.
The feed came from Ontario, and he mistakenly believed his supplier at the Canadian mill would cover the difference.
If he mistakenly believed the exporter would pay the tariff, where did he get that idea? Harris warned everyone (including the farmer) that Trump would impose tariffs and that the tariffs would be paid by the American importers/consumers. If the farmer was surprised, then that means he believed whomever told him that the foreign countries would pay the tariffs. There was only one candidate who said that, and it was Trump. I would bet my paycheck that this farmer voted for Trump.
I am dubious that Trump has put that much thought into this, or anything else.
I think somewhere down the line he heard about a country being hurt by tariffs, and got the idea of it being a great weapon to wield, the end.
And somehow it got rationalized as the other country giving America money.
Right; I think some here are being just a little obtuse. If the farmer believed Mexico would pay for a wall on the southern border are we also not allowed to say he trusted Trump about that until he specifically uses those words?
Trump is influenced by others, and many people see influencing Trump as a good career move. As for Trump’s personal views, I have written elsewhere here of an interview Trump did in 1990 that discusses his views on tariffs. They have not much changed.