Trade War Is Coming
The wisdom of Donald Trump seemingly knows no bounds as he denies that US consumers will pay higher prices due to the higher tariffs on Chinese imports. The US increased the previous 10% tariff on around $200bn worth of Chinese goods – including fish, handbags, clothing and footwear – to 25% on Friday, and The Office of the United States Trade Representative has been ordered to “begin the process of raising tariffs on essentially all remaining imports from China, which are valued at approximately $300 billion”.
Image rawf8/Shutterstock
President Trump has indicated that US consumers can simply switch to buying the same products from other sources, however, this is not as simple as it sounds as the reason many of these goods have been imported from China is due to them being uneconomical to produce in the US, and if they are not American made they will still have to be imported. Thus whichever way you look at it this will hit US consumers in the pocket, at a time when inflation is already beginning to tick up.
Once again he has resorted to Twitter to broadcast his rhetoric and it now looks likely there will be a unilaterally damaging all-out US-China Trade War, at the same time as his administration’s actions threaten to spike the oil price via its policy towards Iran.
..There will be nobody left in China to do business with. Very bad for China, very good for USA! But China has taken so advantage of the U.S. for so many years, that they are way ahead (Our Presidents did not do the job). Therefore, China should not retaliate-will only get worse!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 13, 2019
As they might say in GOT economic winter is coming.
