Tired Of Winning, Yet? Trump’s Trade War Cost U.S. More Than $3 Billion A Month, Economists Report

Companies in America purchasing imported products pay the tariffs, and most if not all of those costs are typically passed onto U.S. consumers who buy the products. 

HuffPost (3/4/19)

President Donald Trump’s trade war cost American businesses and consumers  $3 billion a month last year in higher prices, according to a study by top economists.

The U.S. “experienced substantial increases in the prices of … goods, dramatic changes to its supply-chain network, reductions in availability of imported varieties, and complete pass-through of the tariffs into domestic prices of imported goods,” noted the study issued Saturday by economists from the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, and Princeton and Columbia University.  “Overall … we find that the full incidence of the tariff falls on domestic consumers.”

The trade war also cost companies an additional $1.4 billion a month in efficiency losses as they were forced to scramble to change the way they do business to adapt to the tariffs, such as cobble together new supply chains, according to the study.

Author David Weinstein of Columbia University told Bloomberg: “This is kind of the worst-case scenario in terms of consumers. It’s pretty unclear that this trade war is a net win for the economy at this point.’’ …

Read the Rest

  • So How’s Your Tax Refund, Trumpsters? Thanks To GOP Tax Scam, Big Banks Pocketed An Extra $28 Billion Of Our Money Last Year — While headlines continue to proliferate about average Americans discovering they will not receive the tax return they were expecting—and in many cases, depending on—new federal date released Thursday showed that major U.S. banks earned an extra $28 billion in profits last year thanks to the tax scam bill passed by the Republican Party and signed by President Donald Trump at the end of 2017. As was said by critics of the new tax law at the time, the rich and corporations were given an “early Christmas gift” when the bill was signed, but according to new figures from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) it is a gift that continues to give to the nation’s banking industry. ..  Read the Rest

(Commoner Call cartoon by Mark L. Taylor, 2019. Open source and free for non-derivative use with link to www.thecommonercall.org )