THE TROUBLE WITH TARIFFS

THE TROUBLE WITH TARIFFS

Well aint that American...starting a war. This time it seems the battle will not take place in the fields or in the air, but in our pocket books. Much like the timed honor tradition of any new President of these here United States, it seems like ol' Trump has started a Tariff war and, well, much like in any war, you gotta have a couple of fallen soldiers here and there.

Such as the Missouri nail manufacturer that lost half of its business in two weeks due to Trumps stupid tariff war.

The Missouri based nail company was the only major nail producer in the U.S. lost half of its business during the time the tariffs been in place. Which of course means that downsizing in the company is a given  Of the 500 employees, 60 have been laid off thus far. More blood will come, I'm sure of it.

And if they want an exemption from the tariff, they'd have to get in the back of the line of the 20,000 exemption request. This will clearly result in making America great again. No wait, did I say great? I meant poverty stricken,..

Then you have the cases like Harley Davidson. Harley-Davidson motorcycles decided to expand and create factories in Europe to get around the fact that the tariff war is hurting their bottom line. This action caused the markets to start questioning the whole tariff battle in itself, which then caused Trump to start talking shit to the company and we all know where that ends up.

The bottom line is simply money.  The company states that tariffs would raise the cost of the bikes shipped to Europe by as much as $2,200 each and reduce profits by up to $100 million annually.  But let's also add in that Europe is simply the next big market that the bike company can go towards.  And with Europe fighting back by raising the importation of motorcycles from 6% to 31%, that is basically a must for the company to do.

So that one may be a little bit of Trump's tariffs causing an opening for them to finally say "fuck it, we're making the switch", and actually expanding in Europe. Is that wrong? I mean, it's a capitalistic society, you deal with it. When you're using money as weapons, you gotta realize that it can and will come back to bite you in the ass.

Look, could Harley-Davidson not expanded to Europe? Yeah, especially with the Trump tax give away, they would have had a ton of money to use as a cushion for the whole mess. But when the White House is waging a lot of trade wars at once, it's only natural that the average consumer is going to suffer. Both in the market of purchasing those goods that they normally would not have high tariffs for, but as well as in getting jobs in the field as if it's tougher to buy a product due to economic hardship, companies will eventually suffer. 

We are currently engaged in a trade war in tariffs with China, Canada, Mexico and the European Unions. All of which responded back in kind with their own retaliatory tariffs on goods we send over. This trade back and forth will trigger a lot of unintended consequences. Don't think just because blood isn't spilled on the battle field that a lot of people aren't going to suffer greatly.