What folks may have missed with tariffs, Trump certainly has, follows. He made a statement that he doesn't care that foreign car prices will go up because that will make US made cars cheaper by comparison and therefore people will buy more US cars. He ignores the fact that a not insignificant percentage of components in US cars are foreign made and said parts will cost US manufacturers more and therefore they will have to raise prices. While technically maybe not as much as the tariffs on foreign cars, by some amount.
An object lesson from the last Trump administration and those tariffs that I experienced first hand in lumber pricing. Trump put 25% or some such tariff on Canadian lumber. In the middle of a house remodel and I go to my local lumber yard for some more wood trim. All of a sudden wood trim prices are way up. Now this was in WA state. They have a major lumber industry all their own. I ask the clerk at the lumber yard if I can't source local wood products. He said most of what I am seeing is LOCAL product. So I ask why is local up so much too.? He said as soon as Canada tariffs went into place, local producers raised their prices to be just a few percent below new Canadian rate. So if you think its just tariffs, its not, its markets doing what markets do and the profit motive has an energy all its own that the Chief Dimwit either doesn't know or chooses to ignore.
A more current story. I have worked with a product vendor that makes modular walls for construction. The base structure is aluminum framing. They are Canadian owned with a main plant in Calgary and US plants in GA and AZ. They mostly source raw aluminum from the US, which has to go to Canada to get molded for their product. So coming into Canada it will suffer a 25% reciprocal tariff from Canada. When made into their system for shipping to the US plants where it gets finish details it will suffer a 25% US tariff. To get around this double hit, they will need to either stop using US aluminum or significantly regear factories and where they make things to minimize the tariff risk or risk going out of business as their product no longer is cost effective compared to alternative products. From discussions it clearly sounds like they may shutter the US plants and use Canadian or other non US aluminum. So likely anyway this gets cut, US workers will be out of jobs. Trump plays checkers, the world understands chess.
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