Analysis by Kyle A. Lohmeier
It always takes a government to start a properly destructive war. Whenever private companies go to “war” they tend to do so by slashing their own prices as low as possible, meaning consumers end up being the victors whenever such “wars” break out.
When governments declare “war” on things – even things that aren’t other governments – there tends to be actual battlefields and no one usually ends up winning much of anything. The “War on Drugs” is a prime example; it’s turned inner-city America into a multi-front battlefield where gangs fight with each other and the cops over drug turf. It’s also had the effect of putting taxpayers on the hook for lodging the largest prisoner population, per capita, of any nation on Earth. The impeding “trade war” Trump is determined to start is no different. The battlefield will be the entirety of the American retail space and the casualties will be each and every one of us consumers. The only “winners” will be the treasuries of the participating governments.
Trump can talk about protecting jobs just as much as Obama talked about protecting jobs when he enacted his disastrous tariff on Chinese tires; but mere, idle talk is all it is. Just like Obama’s tire tariff, Trump’s proposed tariff on foreign aluminum and steel won’t end up protecting many jobs in the aluminum and steel industries, but it will drive up the end cost of everything everyone buys.
Of course, Trump being Trump, he’s determined to out-do Obama by enacting such broad tariffs that retaliatory tariffs on such things as tobacco, oranges and other US exports are already being discussed in Brussels to be applied across the EU. So, Americans pay more for things made of metal – regardless of whether the metal is foreign or domestic – and Europeans pay more for Red Man and therefore switch to a different brand of chewing tobacco. Who is this supposed to help, exactly? Are we really supposed to believe that the government is going to do something so clever with the money it collects that it’ll offset the pain we all felt filling the treasury with our over-payments for goods to begin with?
Wouldn’t it make more sense to just not take the pointless measures – enacting these tariffs – that will only, inevitably end up being a net-loss for us all? Of course it would. So, expect Trump to enact the tariffs – every action government takes is always entirely self-serving. In this case, the tariffs will serve the interests of large American companies that deal in steel and aluminum by protecting their products from more competitive ones by artificially inflating the prices the competition must now charge. Doubtlessly, these large companies – part of the oligarchy – have promised Trump and his cohorts something in return. After all, mid-term elections are coming up this year.
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