So, my father-in-law and I were having a political discussion yesterday. He is a longtime FoxNews devotee. I know I won’t convince him of anything, but I want to have something intelligent to say. My argument was that Trump knows nothing about international trade and is royally screwing everything up with these stupid tariffs of his. Unfortunately, international trade isn’t my strength either, so I rather ran out of much to say.
My FiL restated a FoxNews talking point. Germany builds cars and sells them in the United States. The US puts a 2.5% tariff on those imports. The United States builds cars and sells them in Germany. Germany hits those imports with a 10% tariff. My FiL argues that this is not fair. So, the argument goes, the US is not treated fairly by our trading partners and Trump is playing hardball to fix it.
So, is the above tariff arrangement with Germany remotely accurate? Whether it is accurate or not, is an arrangement as described fair to the United States? Why or why not?
On the surface of it, I can see why the FoxNews crowd says this is unfair. Of course, the surface is all they care about. There must be more to it than this.