HAVE TRUMP'S TARIFFS CAST AMERICA INTO COFFEE HELL?
When I fired up my computer the other day, I found on my consistently anti-Trump MSN.com home page an article from the Huffing-and-Puffington Post (Huffington Post) titled as follows:
The First Trump Tariff Americans Will Feel Every Morning Has People Steaming
The argument in the article was that Trump’s new schedule of tariffs will result in an increase in the cost of America’s morning cup of coffee. I read through the article then posted the following in the article’s comments section:
Price of coffee to soar? Probably not. The idea expresses the common and widespread ignorance of what tariffs do and how they work - added of course to the pathetic liberal Democrat psychosis that, reflexively, without any reference to or analysis in the real world, declares anything Donald Trump does as cataclysmically bad.
In fact, as the erudite government expert and financial analyst/advisor James Rickards (among others) explains, there is no historical evidence that tariffs cause general inflation. As the famous economist Milton Friedman noted, "Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon". That means general price inflation - the increases in the prices of everything - is caused not by tariffs, which might or might not impact the prices of some goods, but by the government’s creating money out of nothing - adding money to the money supply while the supply of goods and services remains constant.
Inflation increases the prices of everything. Tariffs do not.
In any case, as Rickards points out, the cost of tariffs is commonly born not by the American consumer but by the exporter in the foreign country, who must lower his prices to gain access to and maintain sales in the lucrative American market. Even if there were to be short-term increase in retail prices to American consumers for some products attendant to the imposition of the new tariffs, those price increases would be limited by the American consumers’ willingness and ability to pay - something economists call the “elasticity of demand”.
That is, if demand for a product is “elastic”, the amount of it people will buy is inversely related to the price. If the price goes up, they buy less. If price goes down, they buy more. Thus, if foreign exporters to America want to maintain their US sales and positioning in the US market, they will have to eat the cost of tariffs themselves.
Some goods, however, have “inelastic demand”. That means, no matter how high the price goes - or how low - the amount people buy will not change. A life-saving drug (I take one) is an example. Whatever the price, you either pay it or you die.
Is the demand for coffee “inelastic”. Will people buy the same amount no matter how high the price goes? I think not.
The overall impact of the new tariffs will be just as the Trump team envisions - a rebuilt and prosperous America. Trump’s enemies, of course, will focus and seize upon on small details and temporary dislocations while they deliberately ignore the brilliance and ultimate rewards of the overall strategy.
As I argued in a previous post - “THE GREAT TARIFF BRUHAHA” - after decades of the world, vampire-like, sucking away the wealth and vitality of the American people, if we want to resurrect the wealthy, strong, secure and preeminent nation earlier generations of Americans enjoyed, there will be a price to be paid.
First comes “the shakes” - delirium tremens - the shock of withdrawal from the generations-long addiction to the strong drug of anti-American enervating economic policy that, trashing national security, selling the nation’s birthright for a mess of low-priced pottage, destroying the nation’s manufacturing base and exporting it overseas (in the case of China, into the hands of our sworn enemy), established lowest possible prices for consumer goods as the ultimate goal. This along with a foreign policy that set America up as the world’s pathetic, laughing-stock sucker and Sugar Daddy.
After this drug withdrawal - or perhaps concurrently - come the rigors of rebuilding the new America.
To their great credit, after generations of economic drug addiction, electoral and popular majorities of the American people nevertheless had enough residual intellectual, moral and spiritual “right stuff” to see through the hellish concatenation of liberal Democrat lies and deceit imposed upon the people during the election-stealing, illegitimate, lawless and treasonous Biden regime. In their residual collective wisdom, the people returned to power inspired, patriotic leadership that understands the greatness of what America once was, sees clearly the horror of what was done to American under treasonous liberal rule, and has the vision of what a renewed and rebuilt American can once again become.
Trump’s new schedule of tariffs notified the world America is finished being ripped off. No more American Sugar Daddy. Secondly, and much more critically, the tariffs will restore our national security. They will bring - they are already bringing - manufacturing back into America and will rebuild critical American industries hollowed out by many decades of anti-American economic treachery that rendered the country insecure and vulnerable in a dangerous world.
We are way past the time for leveling the international tariff playing field. Our national security demands it.
The fact that, rather than being strictly reciprocal, Trump's list of new tariffs only amounts to about 50% of the tariffs still being imposed by foreign countries on us - and yet our new tariffs constitute massive increases in the tariffs we imposed on these countries in the past- makes glaringly clear how badly we have allowed ourselves to be victimized over many decades. We increase our tariffs by 100%, but, after the increase, our tariffs are still only 50% of what we are being charged by other countries. In the face of that stark reality, how can one possibly argue against Trump’s new tariff schedule?
We've been ripped off on a massive scale for WAY too long. Donald Trump’s policies are sound, rational, common sense. They pass the test of documented history. Assuming the American people, in the face the aforesaid discomforts of withdrawal from generations of bad economic and foreign policy, have the wisdom to endure and not, at the first sign of the aforesaid “shakes”, cave into the lying siren call of liberalism, the future for our country has never been brighter. If we continue to support him, he and his team will help us build a renewed, powerful and secure America that will first serve the interests of its citizens, rather than allow our wealth to be sucked away by nations of the world who saw the American people as suckers and our economy as their personal piggie bank.
Right vs. wrong, truth vs. lies, reality vs. fantasy, knowledge vs. ignorance, law vs. lawlessness, order vs. chaos, patriotism vs. treason, justice vs. injustice, light vs. darkness, good vs. evil, happiness vs. misery, God vs. the Godless…
If you want it, you can have it… but there’s no free lunch
Torquemada