Much as I appreciate President Trumps policies in general, I often shake my head in dismay at how he can be his own worst enemy. The trade and tariff chaos was unnecessary and very damaging. Even if the tariffs weren’t contributing to inflation, and they are, at a time when people are highly sensitized to any price increases, he was handing the Dems a club to bash him with in regard to that sensitivity. And with today’s rollback of all tariff increases on food products, the President has acknowledged that in fact those tariffs were increasing the cost of goods to the consumer; they are in essence a tax on consumers. Eliminating them may be the right thing to do but it just adds to the sense of chaos and purposelessness on trade policy.
I said at the start that part of the problem was the failure to clearly enunciate what the goal was–raising revenue? returning production to the US? addressing a perceived imbalance in trade? meeting other goals like eliminating fentanyl precursors? The lack of clarity left the policies open to attack on multiple grounds and left consumers scratching their heads about why they were paying more for a lot of items. The President needs to get past this; get the new trade deals done and in place and leave it alone. And turn his focus to removing regulatory and other barriers that can improve supply of many items, including housing, and lower prices.
Umm.. Kevin: The goals: raising revenue, returning production to the US, addressing an imbalance in trade, meeting other goals like eliminating fentanyl precursors, etc., All of the above were the goals!! I feel those have been stated over and over, just not covered by a biased press.
The rollout has been completely incoherent. Whatever the goals are has not been clearly expressed and keeps jumping around. Several of these objectives are in conflict with each other. Anyone who knows any basic economics knew there would be price increases on tariffed products. As I said the elimination of tariffs on food products is an acknowledgment that they do raise prices to consumers. Those tariffs were incredibly stupid politically, raise prices on the item consumers are most sensitive to? The press may be biased, but they don’t have to be for this to have been handled really badly. We need to get past it quickly.