In a White House press briefing this week, President Donald Trump says he is aiming to levy a 10% tariff on China imports to the US by February 1st. It’s another confirmation that Trump plans to double down on his long-term interest in tariffs.
These plans are an addition to the 25% tariffs for imports from Canada and Mexico, which Trump has already said he plans to implement within the same time frame.
Trump also promised to include tariffs for goods from the European Union as well.
China Tariffs Coming Within Weeks
According to Trump’s claims during the Tuesday press briefing, the reasoning for the 10% tariffs is due to the importation of fentanyl into Mexico and Canada, from China.
“Probably Feb. 1 is the date we’re looking at,” Trump said.
It’s not quite the day-one change Trump had initially promised during his campaign for the presidency, but it’s a clear signal that Trump’s plans to radically change North American trade policy are still moving forward in the near future.
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The changes will likely raise prices from American consumers to a significant extent.
American Consumers Will Shoulder the Burden, Economists Say
Economists aren’t convinced that Trump’s stated actions are in the best interests of the nation. The Economist, writing in an op-ed titled “Tariffs will harm America, not induce a manufacturing rebirth,” noted a few days ago that “the real cost of tariffs is borne, to a large extent, by American consumers through higher import prices.”
According to this analysis, the impact of tariffs during Trump’s first term resulted in both fewer exports bought by Americans and fewer American exports sold to the rest of the world.
“Even if import levels were to remain constant, a 10% universal tariff would fund little more than a twentieth of the federal budget. In reality, imports would not in fact remain constant but rather would decline as higher tariffs raised the price of imports. Even by Mr Trump’s flawed logic, tariffs cannot both create lots of jobs and also raise large amounts of income for the government. That is to count their effects twice over.” -The Economist
More Tariff News Is Set to Come
One thing’s for sure: We’ll be hearing much more about tariffs in the months and years to come.
Trump’s approach towards the conversation surrounding tariffs has been to focus on what other countries are paying, with discussions of creating an “External Revenue Service,” despite general consensus from economists that these costs will be passed largely to US consumers.
Speaking on Monday, Trump has already addressed the potential for universal tariffs, saying “We may, but we’re not ready for that just yet,” according to a CNN report.
He did mention his interest in additional taxes on the EU, later telling Reuters that “The European Union is very, very bad to us. So they’re going to be in for tariffs. It’s the only way … you’re going to get fairness.”
