Free Republic

The stronger economy we’re enjoying now is no accident. Lower taxes, more jobs and fewer regulations are creating a much-needed boost. So why do we still have one foot on the brake? I’m referring to trade. Protectionist measures act as a drag on our progress. Indeed, they threaten to undo much of it. Consider the tariffs and quotas that the Trump administration recently slapped on imports of solar cells and modules, large residential washers, and washer parts. The price? As researcher Tori Whiting notes in a Daily Signal article, we get fewer jobs (roughly 23,000 American jobs this year, according...

The economy is picking up steam, but President Trump could reduce the benefits of his tax cuts and regulatory rollback with protectionism. This risk became more serious after the Commerce Department on Friday recommended broad restrictions on aluminum and steel imports that would punish American businesses and consumers. Last year the President directed Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to investigate whether steel and aluminum imports threaten national security under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. Commerce concluded that they do and has proposed quota and tariff options to mitigate the putative harm. But the evidence in Commerce’s reports...

Americans are increasingly supportive of tariffs on cheap, imported goods from foreign countries to protect American industries and workers against wild globalization. In a poll by Rasmussen Reports, roughly 50 percent of Americans said the federal government should “place tariffs on goods from countries that pay very low wages to their workers,” as opposed to only 26 percent of Americans who said tariffs should not be imposed on foreign countries. About 24 percent of Americans said they were “not sure” if the government should use tariffs to protect American industries. Additionally, a plurality of Americans, about 44 percent, said the...

South Carolina, a state that strongly backed President Donald Trump, isn’t happy about his move to impose hefty tariffs on imported washing machines. That is because Samsung Electronics Co. recently started production at a $380 million manufacturing plant in the state, hiring 600 employees and promising to expand as it increases production for the U.S. market. Republican Gov. Henry McMaster and other GOP state leaders expressed concern that the tariffs announced Monday would slow production at the new factory and have a chilling effect on investment. Gov. McMaster had traveled repeatedly to Washington, D.C., to lobby against the tariffs, telling...

President Donald Trump has approved steep tariffs on imports of solar panels and washing machines to protect US producers, triggering an outcry in China and South Korea and even protests at home. Seoul said Tuesday it planned to take the issue to the World Trade Organization while Beijing expressed "strong dissatisfaction". "Together with other WTO members, China will resolutely defend its legitimate interests," its commerce ministry warned, without indicating any specific counteraction. At home in the US, the move was decried by the solar industry, which said the tariffs would create a "crisis" and cost thousands of US jobs and...

China and South Korea have vowed to defend their interests after the US imposed new tariffs on imported washing machines and solar panels. The tariffs - of up to 50% - will affect the two Asian countries more than any other. They are part of US President Donald Trump's "America First" trade policy, which aims to protect local manufacturers from foreign competition. South Korea said it would complain to the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Despite Whirlpool’s arguments being the corporate equivalent of a child who wants dessert but not to clean his room, the ITC sided with Whirlpool and is now considering which “remedies” to impose. Whirlpool, for its part, suggests a prohibitively high 50 percent tariff on washing machine imports from LG and Samsung. Implementing this tariff, even in a temporary manner, would harm opportunities for thousands of American workers. Samsung is already in the process of building a washing machine factory in South Carolina, expected to employ nearly 1,000 American workers. LG is constructing a factory in Clarksville, Tennessee, which would employ...

The Commerce Department slapped duties of nearly 220 percent on Canada’s Bombardier C Series aircraft Tuesday in a victory for Boeing that is likely to raise tensions between the United States and its allies Canada and Britain. Commerce ruled that Montreal-based Bombardier used unfair government subsidies to sell jets at artificially low prices in the U.S. “The U.S. values its relationships with Canada, but even our closest allies must play by the rules,” Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said. Canada responded by saying it “strongly disagrees” with the U.S. move. “This is clearly aimed at eliminating Bombardier’s C Series aircraft from...

So far, the Trump administration’s trade policy has seen an internal division among economic nationalists and “globalists” on the president’s senior staff. The economic nationalists, and the president himself, believe protectionism will strengthen the American economy. “Look at the 19th century,” said former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon in his recent “60 Minutes” interview. “What built America’s so called ‘American system,’ from Hamilton to Polk to Henry Clay to Lincoln to the Roosevelts? A system of protection of our manufacturing, financial system that lends to manufacturers, OK, and the control of our borders.” In the nationalists’ narrative, high tariffs...

The following is a rare account of President Trump in a small Oval Office meeting, venting at senior staff for sometimes resisting his hawkish trade agenda. This account — confirmed by sources with knowledge of the meeting and undisputed by the White House — hints at where Trump may be heading with his trade agenda. And it shows he believes some of his top economic advisors are resisting his agenda because they are "globalists." The scene: The Oval Office, during Gen. Kelly's first week as Chief of Staff. Kelly convened a meeting to discuss the administration's plans to investigate China...

Back in April, President Trump slapped tariffs of around 20 percent on the Canadian softwood lumber industry. At the time, I wrote that it would cause lumber prices to rise, citing estimates that prices could increase by around 6.4 percent. Well, it turns out I was wrong, and lumber prices have not risen by around 6 or 7 percent. Instead, they’ve risen by much more since the spring—as much as 25 percent. One contributing factor for this spike is not hard to see. Tariffs are taxes on the consumer, restricting the consumer’s options when purchasing a product. The levies make...

With the political world distracted by President Trump's media wars, one of the most consequential and contentious internal debates of his presidency unfolded during a tense meeting Monday in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, administration sources tell Axios. The outcome, with a potentially profound effect on U.S. economic and foreign policy, will be decided in coming days. With more than 20 top officials present, including Trump and Vice President Pence, the president and a small band of America First advisers made it clear they're hell-bent on imposing tariffs — potentially in the 20% range — on steel, and...

Donald Trump has ordered a “national security” review of steel imports with a goal of justifying a broad-based tariff. If his advisers look honestly at the evidence, they can’t possibly find enough to justify such a job-killing, economically harmful policy. ... The greatest harm from broad-based steel tariffs would be to the thousands of American businesses and workers that use steel. These would include the higher cost of American steel for construction (42% of steel shipments), automotive (27%) and machinery (9%). Public works and homes would cost more to build. Many U.S. companies that compete globally would risk losing business...

Despite having no authorization from Congress, the Bush administration has launched extensive working-group activity to implement a trilateral agreement with Mexico and Canada. The membership of the working groups has not been published, nor has their work product been disclosed, despite two years of massive effort within the executive branches of the U.S., Mexico and Canada. The groups, working under the North American Free Trade Association office in the Department of Commerce, are to implement the Security and Prosperity Partnership, or SPP, signed by President Bush, Mexican President Vicente Fox and then-Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin in Waco, Texas, on...

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross announced Monday that the Trump Administration will raise the cost of new single family homes in the U.S. as part of its promise to “make America great again.” Mr. Ross didn’t put it quite that way. He said the Administration will impose a 20% tariff on softwood lumber imports from Canada, which total about $5 billion at year. But that’s a lot of lumber and the tariff will add an additional $1 billion in new costs for U.S. construction. Most of those costs will be added to the price of new American housing, not counting the...

... Take steel, a Trump preoccupation. One reason for exceptions is that domestic manufacturers have limited capability to produce steel of certain strengths, thickness and flexibility. Most higher-strength steels used in thin-walled pipelines are made overseas. Retrofitting plants to produce a type of steel for one or two projects could delay construction and increase the cost. More U.S. workers would have to be retrained, which may not be practical in the short-term. So contractors often have no choice but to import foreign substitutes. The American Petroleum Institute chronicled some of these supply challenges in its response to Mr. Trump’s earlier...

Germany could take the United States to court if Washington goes ahead with plans to tax imports, Economy Minister Brigitte Zypries said Friday, hours before Chancellor Angela Merkel’s first meeting with Donald Trump. “I’m betting partly on reason and partly on the courts” to prevent a damaging trade war, Zypries told Deutschlandfunk public radio. The minister’s combative stance comes ahead of Merkel’s first meeting with Trump in Washington and a gathering of G20 finance ministers in Baden-Baden, western Germany, set to be dominated by the US president’s “America First” policy. […] If a US border tax was found to breach...

Being a world-class economist, my colleague Walter Williams spends much of his time asking probing questions. Here’s one that he posed to me recently by e-mail: Don: I don’t think there are tariffs on coffee and I know of no organization calling for coffee tariffs. I wonder why. Great, probing question. The answer is that there are very few coffee growers in the United States. In the U.S. states, coffee is grown commercially only in Hawaii. Coffee is also grown commercially also in Puerto Rico. The result of this small number of American coffee growers is that these growers are...

REMINDER – One of the larger hurdles President Trump faces is a need to re-educate an entire generation on a fundamentally new vision of the U.S. economy. A return to a Pro-Main Street, goods-based, manufacturing, technology, innovation and industry driven economic model. Interestingly, many people have referenced a 1991 (25 years old) video of Donald Trump testifying before congress – as evidence of him being tuned in to political consequences of economic activity. The entire video is well worth watching because it gives you insight into a very specific moment in time as they discuss the ‘Reagan era’ 1986 tax...

It’s well-known among people who bother to learn the facts that U.S. manufacturing output continues to rise despite the reality that the number of Americans employed in jobs classified as being in the manufacturing sector peaked in June 1977 and has fallen, with very few interruptions, ever since.Nevertheless, some people – for example, the Economic Policy Institute’s Robert Scott – continue to insist that the loss of manufacturing jobs in the U.S. is largely due to increased American trade with non-Americans. Other studies find empirical evidence that labor-saving innovation rather than trade is overwhelmingly responsible for the loss of manufacturing...