Trump said today he wants to impose 5% tariff on all goods imported from Mexico, effective June 10, and will increase by 5% on the first of each month until Mexico gets the immigration issue at the US-Mexico order under control (whatever that means).
Forget NAFTA, forget USMCA. Trump invoked some “national emergency” power to impose this tariff.
No president should be able to do this using loopholes and provisions of the law designed for wholly different purposes. The trade rules that we set up for the world in 1946 call for non-discrimination.
Posts: 12759 | Location: Williamsburg, VA | Registered: 19 July 2005
I mean, it's not like we do much trade with Mexico....
"Mexico was the United States' 2nd largest supplier of goods imports in 2018.
U.S. goods imports from Mexico totaled $346.5 billion in 2018, up 10.3% ($32.3 billion) from 2017, and up 60.5% from 2008. U.S. imports from Mexico are up 768% from 1993 (pre-NAFTA). U.S. imports from Mexico account for 13.6% of overall U.S. imports in 2018.
The top import categories (2-digit HS) in 2018 were: vehicles ($93 billion), electrical machinery ($64 billion), machinery ($63 billion), mineral fuels ($16 billion), and optical and medical instruments ($15 billion).
U.S. total imports of agricultural products from Mexico totaled $26 billion in 2018, our largest supplier of agricultural imports. Leading categories include: fresh vegetables ($5.9 billion), other fresh fruit ($5.8 billion), wine and beer ($3.6 billion), snack foods ($2.2 billion), and processed fruit & vegetables ($1.7 billion)."
Get ready for big spikes in the cost of food if this goes through--especially given all the flooding in the midwest (caused by those non-climate-change-caused tornadoes ).
Posts: 35428 | Location: West: North and South! | Registered: 20 April 2005
Better stock up on tequila and your favorite cerveza.
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Top imports from Mexico, according to the government, include vehicles (including passenger cars), machinery (including flat-screen TVs), mineral fuels and medical instruments. Mexico is also the U.S.’s largest agricultural importer, which means the following foods will likely become more expensive:
Fresh vegetables, including asparagus, cauliflower, celery, kale and lettuce Fresh fruit, including avocados, berries, dates, figs, kiwis, pineapples and tomatoes Wine and beer Snack foods Processed fruit and vegetables
Business Insider reports that the tariffs could have significant impact on the avocado trade, with the U.S. importing 85% of its Hass avocados from Mexico last year. Chipotle stock dropped 3% on Friday, as investors worried about how the restaurant chain would be impacted by the increased avocado costs.
Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst at Bankrate.com, says imposing tariffs to fix an immigration problem is akin to “fielding a baseball team for a football game. It doesn’t compute and is likely counter-productive.”
“While the federal income tax cut gave consumers and corporations additional ability to spend, billions of dollars in tariffs on Mexican imports does just the opposite and worse,” Hamrick added in a statement to CNBC Make It.
TDS seems to have stricken the US Chamber of Commerce:
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The economic damage of U.S. tariffs on Mexican goods would tear through battleground states that President Donald Trump needs to win re-election, hurting the auto industry in Michigan and Ohio, dairy farmers in Wisconsin and grain and hog farmers in Iowa and North Carolina.
In a pair of tweets Thursday night, Trump warned he’d impose tariffs on Mexico starting at 5% on June 10 and ramping up in increments to 25% in October unless Mexico stops immigrants from entering the U.S. illegally.
Industry advocates, including manufacturers and various agricultural commodity groups, issued dire warnings about the fallout from tariffs. The powerful U.S. Chamber of Commerce said it’s considering a legal challenge.
Maybe it's worth paying more for avocados if I-1's Mexican tariffs piss off a bunch of people in battleground states:
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A top Mexican official said the country won’t retaliate before discussing the matter with the U.S. Still, the potential tariffs, “if turned into reality, would be extremely serious,” said Jesus Seade, the country’s undersecretary of foreign relations for North America.
Retaliation by Mexico is virtually certain to strike Trump’s political base in rural America. Farmers are already under strain from ongoing trade wars, low commodity prices, and natural disasters including spring flooding across the Midwest.
Agricultural groups had been relieved just two weeks earlier when Trump moved to end a trade dispute with Mexico by ending tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from the country. Now, they face the prospect Mexico will resume punitive duties on U.S. agricultural goods.
Chris Kolstad, chairman of U.S. Wheat Associates, a grower-financed group that promotes exports, and a wheat farmer from Ledger, Montana, compared the potential fallout to “struggling to survive a flood then getting hit by a tornado.”
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Agricultural and industrial regions played an important role in Trump’s electoral map in 2016. He won an Electoral College majority and the presidency based on a combined margin of fewer than 80,000 votes in three states: Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
The largest agricultural sector in each of those three states is dairy. Mexico is “our number one market,” Tom Vilsack, president and CEO of the U.S. Dairy Export Council and a former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, said in an email.
Iowa, which voted for Trump in 2016 after supporting Democrat Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, is the largest U.S. producer of hogs and of corn. North Carolina, another electoral battleground, is the nation’s second-largest hog producer.
Trump has already offered government subsidies, twice, to farmers affected by retaliatory tariffs. What's to say Trump won't offer more government subsidies to these affected voting blocs?
Originally posted by Nina: I'm wondering whether people really understand how much fresh produce we see in our stores comes from Mexico. Hint: it ain't just avocados.
This. I don’t think most people have any idea. I kind of sort of have an idea, but I’m sure there are a lot more things from Mexico than I realize. Mr SK and I were just talking about how this could have a huge affect on us at the grocery store.
Some Republicans in key states that rely on a trade relationship with Mexico are warning Trump that he risks hurting U.S. interests.
"It's important to remember that any actions that we take to secure our Southern border must also keep in mind the important role that Mexico plays in the economy of the United States," said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. "My state enjoys a strong relationship economically with Mexico because of that 1,200-mile common border."
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But Jorge Guajardo, a former Mexican ambassador to China, said what Mexico can do that China did not is implement more strategic countermeasures as opposed to blanket tariffs.
As an example, he said Mexico could consider targeting Kentucky bourbon because of its political importance and ties to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. It is also shipped to Mexico for consumption but is not part of a supply chain like production of various auto parts that make several trips back and forth over the border as a car is built.
"Very simply," Guajardo said, "Sen. Lindsey Graham [R-S.C.] said he supported President Trump's tariffs. You can be first certain that Mexico is thinking [about what] South Carolina [is] exporting to Mexico. And that will be targeted as long as it's not in a supply chain."
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