
Fed study finds US tariffs backfired - belltaco
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/fed-study-finds-trump-tariffs-backfired-2019-12-27
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twoflower9
People with business interests reliant on cheap foreign manufacturing
desperate to have tariffs reversed. More news at 11.

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exabrial
A Tax on something backfired?

The most frustrating thing is watching this pattern repeat itself thousands of
times.

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ehvatum
Sure, tariffs are rough in the immediate if your business model is selling
cheap Chinese steel to a dwindling middle class. You might even miss your
quarterly numbers and donate to Mitt Romney. However, wage growth for the
bottom 25% is at a decade high. [https://www.frbatlanta.org/chcs/wage-growth-
tracker.aspx](https://www.frbatlanta.org/chcs/wage-growth-tracker.aspx) Trump
won’t be in office forever. Soon enough, you can sell us all out all over
again.

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postpawl
Isn’t the wage growth the result of a long period of high employment? Your
comment makes it sound like it’s the result of tariffs.

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Tempest1981
US policy is now driven purely by emotion, not logic or math.

The tax cuts briefly juiced growth, but not to the predicted 4% growth. Now
growth is back down to 2%. Tariffs might be a contributor.

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modriano
Yeah, but the tariffs only provoked any growth because companies rushed to
stock up on supplies before the tariffs went into effect, anticipating that
the coming price increase would decrease profitability and potentially destroy
specific supply chains.

Tariffs can't produce any net growth, they can just juice short term growth at
the expense of long term growth, and they can produce localized growth (ie for
US steelmakers) at the expense of the broad domestic sector (ie all US
manufacturers that use steel).

In general, tariffs are an own-goal. Trump had to implement new subsidies for
US agricultural firms on the order of tens of billions of dollars annually
(and has cost more than twice what Obama's big three automaker bailout cost)
to prevent the collapse of US ag that lost a ton of export business because of
the tariffs. If we could get China to stop stealing US intellectual property,
perhaps the tariffs would be worthwhile, but there is a zero percent chance
that will happen.

Tariffs are just bad economic policy.

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thoughtstheseus
Some agricultural subsidies were automatic and in place prior to recent
tariffs. Tariffs are bad economic policy if you’re trying to maximize global
output, few rational actors try to do that.

