The president’s reasons for imposing tariffs on Canada and Mexico keep changing (and none make sense).

Donald Trump just imposed a 25 percent tariff on virtually all goods produced by America’s two largest trading partners — Canada and Mexico. He simultaneously established a 20 percent across-the-board tariff on Chinese goods.

As a result, America’s average tariff level is now higher than at any time since the 1940s.

Meanwhile, China and Canada immediately retaliated against Trump’s duties, with the former imposing a 15 percent tariff on American agricultural products and the latter putting a 25 percent tariff on $30 billion of US goods. Mexico has vowed to mount retaliatory tariffs of its own.

This trade war could have far-reaching consequences. Trump’s tariffs have already triggered a stock market sell-off and cooling of manufacturing activity. And economists have estimated that the trade policy will cost the typical US household more than $1,200 a year, as the prices of myriad goods rise.

All this raises the question: Why has the US president chosen to upend trade relations on the North American continent? The stakes of this question are high, since it could determine how long Trump’s massive tariffs remain in effect. Unfortunately, the president himself does not seem to know the answer.

In recent weeks, Trump has provided five different — and contradictory — justifications for his tariffs on Mexico and Canada…

…more in the article.

  • @[email protected]English
    -1•8 hours ago

    maybe if everyone is telling you the same thing, it’s not us that’s wrong? food for thought.

    • Cosmic ClericEnglish
      1•7 hours ago

      maybe if everyone is telling you the same thing, it’s not us that’s wrong? food for thought.

      One, not everybody is telling me the same thing. I learned to do this from someone else here on Lemmy, and I’ve had others tell me that they like that I’m doing what I’m doing, and that its ok to do.

      Two, never heard anybody give a valid reason why I’m wrong, just that I’m wasting my time, or that they don’t like me doing it because it bothers them to see it, as if they want the Internet to format what they see to their personal tastes/likes.

      Three, its a single line of text that appears in a smaller font at the bottom/footer of a comment. If people are really getting bent out of shape over it, then maybe they need to do some self-interspection on their end.

      Four, if its not a smaller font line of text, and they seeing regular sized formatting text, then they need to talk to the developers of the client they are using, and ask them to support sub/superscript fonts. The web site client shows it just fine.

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