After weeks of nervous anticipation in the financial markets and in the capitals of America’s trading partners, Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs have arrived, and, even by his standards, they are shockingly high and wide-ranging. After delivering a potted economic history of the country in which he bizarrely claimed that the Great Depression would have been avoided if high tariffs had been in place, Trump announced that “reciprocal tariffs” would go into effect on April 9th, with rates of 34 per cent on goods imported from China, 24 per cent on Japan, and 20 per cent on the European Union. Some of the highest rates were reserved for export-led developing countries in Asia: 46 per cent on Vietnam, 48 per cent on Laos, and 49 per cent on Cambodia.

-

 

After weeks of nervous anticipation in the financial markets and in the capitals of America’s trading partners, Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs have arrived, and, even by his standards, they are shockingly high and wide-ranging. After delivering a potted economic history of the country in which he bizarrely claimed that the Great Depression would have been avoided if high tariffs had been in place, Trump announced that “reciprocal tariffs” would go into effect on April 9th, with rates of 34 per cent on goods imported from China, 24 per cent on Japan, and 20 per cent on the European Union. Some of the highest rates were reserved for export-led developing countries in Asia: 46 per cent on Vietnam, 48 per cent on Laos, and 49 per cent on Cambodia.
These levies are separate from the ones Trump has already imposed on steel, aluminum, and foreign-made cars and parts. “Taken as a whole, his tariffs represent a dramatic expansion from the more narrowly targeted duties he imposed in his first term—some of which the Biden Administration retained—and a final nail in the coffin for the open trading environment that reigned before 2016,” John Cassidy writes.
Trump claimed that the tariffs would lure manufacturers back, create jobs, and raise a great deal of money in new revenues. But regardless, of the prospects of his policies boosting U.S. manufacturing over the long term, in the short term they are likely to inflict pain on two major constituents of the G.O.P. coalition: working-class MAGA voters and Republicans in business. “While some of Trump’s supporters may cheer him for trying to protect the industries and communities they work in, they will now pay higher prices for everything from clothes and electronics imported from Asia to French wines and Irish whiskey to cars built inside and outside the United States,” Cassidy notes. Read his full column.
 

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

“On March 6, 2020, Andrew and I went to a rave. If it weren’t for what happened later, I don’t think it would have stood out in my memory.” In an excerpt from her forthcoming memoir, Emily Roxy Witt writes about New York at the beginning of the pandemic—the uncertainty, the fear, the loss, the protests, the rage, the loneliness—and the end of a relationship. The Last Rave The Last Rave In the summer of 2020, I felt as if I’d entered the wrong portal, out of the world I knew and into its bizarro twin.

-
Image
  “On March 6, 2020, Andrew and I went to a rave. If it weren’t for what happened later, I don’t think it would have stood out in my memory.” In an excerpt from her forthcoming memoir, Emily Roxy Witt writes about New York at the beginning of the pandemic—the uncertainty, the fear, the loss, the protests, the rage, the loneliness—and the end of a relationship. The Last Rave In the summer of 2020, I felt as if I’d entered the wrong portal, out of the world I knew and into its bizarro twin.
Read more

The Mexican director Sara Gómez, who died in 1974, made about 20 short documentaries in her short life, starting in 1961, two years after the Revolution. In 1974, she shot her only feature-length film, “One Way or Another,” completed posthumously, which mixes a romantic drama with documentary sequences. Gómez, the first woman to direct movies in Mexico, created “a body of work that was in the creative and political forefront of its time and, in many ways, remains so even now,” Richard Brody writes. “Gómez, with her blend of documentary and fiction, of drama and intellectual analysis, devised a new cinematic method, which she used to express a powerful vision of her country, her time, and her own place in both.”

-
  The Mexican director Sara Gómez, who died in 1974, made about 20 short documentaries in her short life, starting in 1961, two years after the  Revolution. In 1974, she shot her only feature-length film, “One Way or Another,” completed posthumously, which mixes a romantic drama with documentary sequences. Gómez, the first woman to direct movies in Mexico, created “a body of work that was in the creative and political forefront of its time and, in many ways, remains so even now,” Richard Brody writes. “Gómez, with her blend of documentary and fiction, of drama and intellectual analysis, devised a new cinematic method, which she used to express a powerful vision of her country, her time, and her own place in both.”
Read more

The entrepreneurial ethic addresses a central tension of capitalism: people need to work to earn a living, but stable, fulfilling jobs are hard to find. In times of economic inequality, the prospect of becoming your own boss holds a lot of appeal.

-
  The entrepreneurial ethic addresses a central tension of capitalism: people need to work to earn a living, but stable, fulfilling jobs are hard to find. In times of economic inequality, the prospect of becoming your own boss holds a lot of appeal.
Read more