Loading ...My carnivore diet son has been working in Texas for three months, and he doesn’t see any sign of high quality steaks anywhere. Tough and tasteless, according to him, (my Dad said the same 50 years ago compared to English beef) but the locals rave about them. This may be because butchers don’t dress them properly – who knows – but he’s looking forward to a decent piece of meat when he gets home. So it’s funny that your livestock associations complain about barriers to entry into the Australian market because it sounds like we wouldn’t eat your beef anyway. Such is one of the dangers of tariffs; encouraging mediocrity.
And now TeamTrump is talking about export credits …. which can only be regarded by other countries as a negative tariff by the exporter, requiring retaliation …. indicating that the Liberation Day junket was badly thought out rather than part of a strategy. Export credits are going to reduce the revenue from tariffs, how has that been costed into the MAGA equation? They obviously haven’t. Looks like Trump got carried away with the initial caving by countries subject to his 25% tariffs in the first couple of weeks. They all caved to his demands immediately to get them rescinded, and he assumed any tariff on anyone would work likewise.
Not that any tariff deals with the fundamental inequality between the US and the most tariffed nations; labour costs. If there were no tariffs anywhere, you (and us) would still be flooded with cheap clothing, food, beer (Corona is now brewed in China), toys, electronics, steel etc. because their wages are so much lower. And also because their purchasing power is so much lower there is no market over there for middle class goods produced in America or Europe. They can’t afford them. So no tariffs anywhere would still result in trade deficits for developed countries.