Why people need to stop over simplifying the multi country origin of foreign products bought by Americans. I.e. ‘Reciprocal’ tariffs will not work
We saw this printed in Politico
quote
President Donald Trump on Friday said he would be announcing tariffs next week that match the duties imposed by other countries, in what would be a major shift from his previous threat to impose an across-the-board tariff on all imports from across the world.
“I’ll be announcing that next week, reciprocal trade, so that we’re treated evenly with other countries,” he told reporters at a press briefing with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba. “We don’t want any more, any less.” The president had previously threatened to impose a flat 10 or 20 percent universal tariff, and had tasked his administration with studying that possibility as part of a broader trade review due by April. 1
end of quote
Why this is insane. Take an I phone, made in Asia. i.e. frequently the parts are made in several different countries
IMO, say Malaysia, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan, with then the I phone assembled in Guangdong, PRC
Guaranteed that the FIVE countries will have DIFFERNT tariffs, i.e. this is a no brainer.
FIVE,. NOT one
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Tell me, Mr. President, will you take the weighted average of the five tariff regimes in order to slap on a sane tariff for a product ASSEMBLED in Guangdong but with parts made in four other places ?
This simply is INSANE
Reciprocal tariffs, simply are LUNACY in an era when many electronic devices are sourced by the effort of multiple countries.
IMO what will other countries do in return ?
Unless the object is the complete destruction of international trade, this proposal is amateur hour and a way to wreck international trade in its entirety
This is a fight which cannot be won with blunt instruments
It also will wreck the possibility of near shoring i.e. Mexico as a source could be wrecked by this sort of sledge hammering
Look before one leaps
Andrew Beckwith, PhD
Source
Machine Learning | API wizard | Linux connoisseur | Python expert
2 周Economics as a field has had a very decisive majority opinion on tariffs since David Ricardo, at least among those are not completely off their rocker. That is that tariffs are a bad idea.