Posted on 04/14/2025 4:01:47 AM PDT by karpov
President Trump is taking exception to the idea that his Administration is offering exceptions to his punishing tariffs. That’s the story after a confusing weekend that offers more lessons in the arbitrary nature of Trump trade policy.
Late Friday his own Customs and Border Protection (CBP) department issued a notice listing products that will be exempt from Mr. Trump’s so-called reciprocal tariffs that can run as high as 145% on goods from China. The exclusions apply to smartphones, laptop computers, hard drives, computer processors, servers, memory chips, semiconductor manufacturing equipment, and other electronics.
The CBP notice takes the tariff rate on these products down considerably. Barron’s calculates that the exceptions cover $385 billion in 2024 imports. That includes $100 billion from China, or 23% of U.S. imports from that country. The tariff rate falls to 20% on the newly exempted Chinese exports.
The press spent Saturday reporting this without cavil from the White House. We weighed in with a WSJ.com editorial on Saturday afternoon, noting that this meant a big reprieve for powerful tech companies, though not for small manufacturers.
But on Sunday morning Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said tariffs on electronic goods would go up again in the future, though he offered no details. Mr. Lutnick hasn’t been the most reliable voice on the Administration’s plans, so that was taken with some caution.
Finally Mr. Trump jumped in late Sunday afternoon. “NOBODY is getting ‘off the hook’ for the unfair Trade Balances, and Non Monetary Tariff Barriers, that other Countries have used against us, especially not China which, by far, treats us the worst!” he wrote. “There was no Tariff ‘exception’ announced on Friday. These products are subject to the existing 20% Fentanyl Tariffs, and they are just moving to a different Tariff ‘bucket.’”
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
WSJ must now be run by the DNC.
The editorial writers at the Wall Street Journal are absolutely the dumbest people in journalism. They do not understand the multi track tariff policy of President Trump. They are bogged down in conflating one trade bucket with another. They are low on reading comprehension.
Whether they realize it or not, they seem to believe that presenting a simple tear of policy publicly is more important than addressing unfair and unbalanced trading. They don’t recognize that the United States has over a period of decades allowed other countries to impose very unfair. Trading policies while remaining open and free to those countries.
That’s the story after a confusing weekend that offers more lessons in the arbitrary mendacity of Fake News policy.
1) Some deep stater releases a vague statement on a friday after folks leave DC
2) WSJ publishes pre-written propaganda
3) Weekend of turmoil and narrative
I'm no fan of mainstream media, but a broken clock gets it right twice a day.
This whole tariff debacle is one giant "cluster f$#k!
Even if all of Trump's claims are correct, which I doubt, why not reach out to the worst of the so-called abusers and start a dialog to make a change instead of telling them to come and "kiss my ass."
Now, that's surely one way to win friends and influence people! NOT.
“The editorial writers at the Wall Street Journal are absolutely the dumbest people in journalism. They do not understand the multi track tariff policy of President Trump. They are bogged down in conflating one trade bucket with another. They are low on reading comprehension.”
If they tell the entire story the first day, the need for a daily paper is gone.
The easy trade partners, not necessarily the same as our allies, have already put together a deal sheet to be worked out in the next 90 days. This population are the folks who buy Caterpillar, Ford, GM, GE, Deere and the other heavy goods out of the Midwest that Trump wants to encourage.
The harder trade partners, some including Ing metaphysical partners in the moderner world have a ton of things to work out internally before making a deal. How exactly does Taiwan deal with Chip foundries being outsourced due to their own security concerns is a really hot issue, that cannot be solved by them in 90 days.
The uninvolved trading partners, like India, can make a ton of noise for no net impact. Boeing is the only thing they might buy, and that already had a ton of strings attached. If their goods go to a intermediate state to be added to an assembly then sold into the united states, the same net dollars flow.
China, Vietnam are addicted to selling into the US market, sure they sell other things at a much lower margin into the EU, but Walmart and Amazon are truly their customer.
Each major product is the assembly of lots of little products. For example, the 777-200 aircraft has about 132,500 engineered, unique parts; including rivets, bolts and other fasteners, the airplane has more than 3 million parts. Boeing buys a very large fraction of those parts from other companies, some to unique specification while others are standard catalog items from their suppliers.
Consider the clothing industry: you have the manufacture of fabric, cutting tools, thread, zippers, buttons, snap fasteners, Velcro, sewing needles, sewing machines, patterns, dyes, and more. How much of all this can be brought back, and how much will still be imported?
The sheer magnitude of the effort needed to onshore even the most security critical elements of our manufacturing can't be done overnight. It took the diaspora of our capability to migrate to other countries. Bringing the most essential industry will take time.
Then there is the problem of raw materials.
I'm interested to see what the United States is willing to do to partially decouple itself from global dependence.
bttt
1) - in what way was this the result of a “deep stater”?
Just a WAG on my part
1) Lots of leftovers from 0bama and FJB resist following the chain of command, they are “geniuses” drunk on power
2) They look for ways to upend and block President Trump’s needed reforms and policies
Are you referring to the late Friday night publishing of the tariff exceptions?
If so, I have not seen anything yet that claims it was a rouge employee and that were not to be published.
Friday nights news drops are for schenanigans, tom foolery and hijinks
Delusional drivel.
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