whiterock said:
ATL Bear said:
whiterock said:
ATL Bear said:
whiterock said:
ATL Bear said:
whiterock said:
historian said:
boognish_bear said:
She is wrong. In the final analysis, the consumer pays all tariffs. The companies who buy the products and then sell them here in America pass on the increased costs through higher prices. It's inevitable.
It's all political theater.
same is true for taxes.
the point of tariffs is to increase the cost of imported goods, to make them less competitive against domestically produced goods. And looming tariffs can have significant impact on investment decisions (as we have seen numerous times to our advantage in the last few weeks). Manufacturers can on longer count on reflexive US aversion to tariffs. The only way to hedge against that risk is to invest in MANUFACTURING in the USA (to ensure access to the US market).
Nothing new here. We did that in the 70s with Japanese automakers, and now most Japanese brand vehicles sold here are made here. Trump is merely trying to force that same dynamic on other sectors now.
70% of Japanese vehicles sold in America are imported.
you have it exactly backwards.
https://www.allamericanmade.com/where-are-toyotas-made/
That didn't say what you thought it did. Unless Mexico and Canada are part of the U.S.
You apparently missed this sentence.
"An estimated 69 percent of all the Japanese vehicles made for the US were made in the United States."
Now, you could drill down a little further and note another fact which mitigates the first - vehicles made in the USA (including by US companies) have up to 25% imported content. In fact, that is a more important datum. Direct importation of 100% foreign content items is not exactly representative of the total. in no small part, that's because of what I have referred to (and you have ignored) over and over - countries typically will demand on-shore production when trade generates excessive demands. countries typically do not want to offshore entire industries. They want the jobs created at home. There are numbers of reasons for that, to include pressure from political constituencies as well as national security concerns (the ability to mobilize for war). I say again, trade policy ALWAYS serves national security policy.
All those Japanese manufacturing plants are here because of trade agreements negotiated in the 1970's and 1980's. Trump is merely doing what Reagan did = demanding a greater percentage of on-shore production of goods sold in the USA.
It's an incorrect stat, probably because the article was focused on Toyota. 70% are manufactured in North America not America. Japan imports nearly 30% of their cars sold in America from Mexico into the U.S., with some like Mazda and others highly import heavy. Toyota happens to be the best performer in U.S. production. But as if to prove my macro point, even Toyota with its best performance, produced 25,000 jobs over that long horizon of negotiation. Yet we're applying tariffs that impact millions of US employees, and companies will adjust staffing to profitability.
uh, not quite.
Fed stats say unit sales of vehicles have hovered around 17m per year.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TOTALSA
Other stats indicate, unit sales of imported vehicles are about 7m per year.
https://www.usimportdata.com/blogs/top-us-car-imports-by-country-in-2024
That's about a 60-40 ratio (varying from year to year).
The point of the tariffs is to force companies to move greater percentages of their production to the US market. No one wants to be shut out of the US market. They will more likely increase production here to avoid the (higher) cost of tariffs. Several such moves have already been announced. You will see more in the future. Every company wants a stable supply chain, and the best way to ensure that is to move production closer to markets. Wouldn't it be better if that 60-40 split went the other way around?
90% of cars made in Mexico and Canada are exported to USA.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2025/03/13/volkswagen-bmw-make-preparations-tariffs/82375652007/
Why must that be the natural order of things? Does Canada REALLY have dramatically lower costs? (No). Wouldn't it be better if those cars were made here? We do want jobs HERE, don't we? Voters do. that's one reason why many of them voted for Trump......to ignore the nincompoops arguing bad trade policy - that others can tariff us but we can't tariff them.
Note that link cites BMW as planning to absorb tariff costs. Why would they do that?
Heard a radio report that VW will do the same.
Why would they do that?
(perhaps due to subsidies from their own governments......)
Doesn't that undercut the argument that tariffs are direct cost burdens on consumers?
Doesn't that highlight the level the degree to which subsidy and VAT et al of our trading partners disadvantage US producers?
among the key concepts you are ignoring is this: trade is about JOBS (not about cheap goods). Governments negotiate trade agreement to promote job growth in their countries and protect the ones they already have.
"The only sustainable growth is export-led growth." If I heard my professors say that once, I heard it a thousand times. That's what Trump is trying to get to. How do you get to export-led growth if you do not engage in the same kinds of tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade employed by your trading partners? Sure, everybody reducing everything to zero is preferred, but that's not terribly realistic. Reality is everybody does everything they can to protect/promote domestic employment. Except the USA. Until now.....
In a cold war context, tolerating trade imbalance had strategic benefits - tying allies to us economically. Without that Cold War context, tolerating trade imbalance is imbecility defined.
On the data, I'll concede Japan doesn't import 70% if you'll concede they don't manufacture 70% in the U.S. It appears at best it's more 50/50.
Several poor points though. We will never have a positive trade balance. Our consumption way exceeds our capacity, and we consume things we can never be a provider of, and certainly in a mass amount. So export driven growth is a theoretical fantasy, not a practical reality. What Trump is trying to do is lessen dependence upon imports, which I certainly have no qualms with except if it's being achieved through unsustainable anti-competitive government schemes intended to pick specific corporate winners and supports inefficient companies. That's what tariffs do.
And trade is not about jobs. Some government bureaucrat or politician might think that, but it isn't. From an economic perspective, the purpose of trade is to enhance efficiency, maximize wealth, drive innovation, and improve overall economic welfare by allowing individuals, businesses, and countries to specialize in producing goods and services where they have a comparative advantage. Jobs are a by product when those are achieved. Trying to artificially manufacture a comparative advantage through tariffs always fails. The irony is that most trade has little to no tariffs, at least that are material. Sure there are some specific protectionism that we and others practice on certain goods, but broadly they aren't there.
Again, the Cold War argument is completely irrelevant. The most obvious example why? U.S. exports have increased 700% since the end of the Cold War. In fact our CAGR of exports has been higher post Cold War.
You are extolling an outdated and disproven theory that unions used to tout about jobs.
