[Pearls Before Swine]

Trump is wrong again. First, the tariffs are collected at the border and are initially paid directly by the Chinese seller, not the Chinese government. The seller then passes the tariff cost on to American consumers, who purchase the goods on which the tariffs have been imposed. The tariff is actually a sales tax, which will increase by 25% the cost of any product purchased in America that originated in China.

Trump is wrong short term, 200% right long term. Economic studies include game theory.

Short term, yes, tariffs load the consumer. Longer term, they weigh against predatory behavior and capture of strategic industries. If the Chinese government targets semiconductors, and takes losses for a few years doing so, are we willing to give them a dominant position there? Or in commercial planes? That's what this is about.

[dfwgator]

The idea is to get closer to the ideal of mythical “Free Trade”, but Free Trade is something we’ve never had. Tariffs are a useful tool to get concessions and leverage in order to get a fairer deal on trade in the long run.

[datricker]

Also president Trump is demostrating that what many of here probably believed for years is that free trade is axiomatically good and tariffs are bad.

As our eyes have been opened to how long and pervasively we've been lied to - we experience president Trump strategically deploying tariffs - and it seems once again we are seeing we've been lied to about this as well.

We're only months away from most in the nation having the notion of - why didn't past presidents do this to protect the America worker, economy and national advantage?