Hysteria erupted over President Donald Trump’s threats to level trade tariffs against particular countries.
Both American and foreign critics blasted them as either counterproductive and suicidal or unfair, imperialistic and xenophobic.They complain that tariffs burden consumers with higher prices to protect weak domestic industries that, shielded from competition, will have no incentive to improve efficiency.
Yet when Trump threatened to level tariffs against Mexico, Canada, Colombia, Venezuela, China or the European Union, they were not primarily aimed at propping up particular inefficient US industries at all.First, it refused to address its cartels’ illegal multibillion-dollar export of lethal fentanyl into the United States.
President Donald Trump's tariff threats are all about cracking down on the dire issues the US has grappled with over the years and those claiming to be shocked by such measures know this all too well, writes Victor Davis Hanson. Picture: Ian Maule/Getty Images Third, Mexico grows its American trade surpluses each year. The imbalance is now a mind-boggling nearly $170 billion.
Its entire 20th-century ascendance was based on stealing US technology, dumping its products on the US market below the cost of production to capture market share and forcing American corporations to relocate, offshore and outsource — leaving our industrial hinterland a “rustbelt.”For nearly the last 80 years, the United States has subsidized its defense during the Cold War and afterward.
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