A Tariffic Mess

​This is sort of an odd column, because I don’t have a clue what’s going on with the Trump/MAGOP-approved tariffs.  What makes me comfortable writing about that is I don’t get the idea that Trump or any of his team – including those pushing the tariffs, like Peter Navarro or Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick – do either.
 
I mean that seriously.  First, there were tariffs on every country and territory, include those like Heard Island that has no people, just penguins.  Then, there were increased tariffs on China to 125%.  After that, there was (is) a “pause” on tariffs for everyone (including the penguins) – except for China – for 90 days, at which point they might return.  Then, the tariffs on China were increased to 145%.  Then, the tariffs on China for things like microchips, semiconductors, mobile phones, laptops and TVs would be excluded.  And then…just yesterday, Secretary Lutnick (the billionaire who said his mother-in-law wouldn’t complain if one of her Social Security checks was delayed and went on the slam those who did complain as “fraudsters”) said that, wait, that semiconductors, smartphones, laptops and other electronics would get separate tariffs – but not for a month.  Or at some point fairly soon.
 
So, yes, I really mean it when I say that I truly don’t think anyone on the Trump team – especially Trump – truly have any idea what’s going on with tariffs.  And that includes the MAGOPs in Congress who keep letting him get away with the tariffs, despite having the authority to block them.
 
There are several problems with this – okay, there are many problems – starting with, for all the attention the “pauses” got (along with Trump’s stock manipulations), many of the tariffs are still active, most especially for China, which is no small trading partner.  And companies, as well as restaurants, have already started raising some prices.  And also, Business loves stability, and this tariff mess is about as close as you can get to the definition of uncertainty and instability.
 
In creating their model for tariffs, Trump and his team used some cockamamie formula that they said was based on a paper from the University of Chicago written by Brent Neiman and other economists – and Neiman himself was on MSNBC yesterday saying that the Trump tariff team has totally misunderstood the paper and gotten it all wrong.  Most notably, he said, was that the Trump/MAGOP tariffs were announced as a way to equalize trade imbalances with every country – but what the U of C paper explained is that there is nothing wrong with trade imbalances between countries.  That some countries import more products they need, but don’t have much to export back in return – and the converse is, of course, true, where some countries will export more to another, but the other country doesn’t produce much that the first country needs to import.
 
So, on this other level, as Neiman pointed out – about the completely misunderstanding of the paper he and his fellow University of Chicago economists wrote, on which the Trump Tariff Team said they based their own formulas – that crackerjack Trump/MAGOP team didn’t have a clue what they were doing.
 
So, I’m comfortable not being even close to having a clue what in the world they’re doing.  More importantly, neither it seems does the Business Community.
 
And we’re only that the very beginning, before the prices increase and the wheels fall of the wagon.