Announced with yet another torrent of “we are victims!!!” per the usual playbook.
Other country’s tariffs inflated with assessments of cost of “non-monitary barriers” and China gets an extra hit for “currency manipulation”. The reciprical tariff is half of the inflated assessment of the counterparty’s tariffs.
A few of the rates I heard:
China 34%
EU 20%
Nam 46%
Taiwan: 32%
Japan: 24%
TIG was holding a nice table of the rates. Presumably, that table will be visible on line sometime tonight.
I don’t know if the “reciprocal” tariffs will be charged on cars, in addition to the flat 25%, or if cars are outside of the “reciprocal” rates.
** In May 1930, Canada, the most loyal trading partner for the U.S., retaliated by imposing new tariffs on 16 products that accounted altogether for approximately 30% of U.S. exports to Canada.[19] Later, Canada also forged closer economic links with the British Empire via the British Empire Economic Conference of 1932. France and Britain protested and developed new trade partners. Germany developed a system of trade via clearing.**
Just a question. As someone who has been checking the clock the last several weeks expecting the gloom and the doom to arrive, why was the schtock market up today? Or at all? They’ve known this was coming. Should I expect something acute as soon as futures trading starts?
He said they have added in factors for “non-tariff barriers”. For instance, in Japan, they drive on the left, and require right hand drive cars. The US automakers don’t make RHD cars, so US built cars need to go into a custom shop in Japan to be converted, at very high cost. Some years ago, Japan required 100% BSE testing. The US does not. If Japan is still requiring that level of BSE testing, TIG probably added a factor for that.
What I notice is the highest tariffs are on the countries that really aren’t known as manufacturing powerhouses.
Additional rates on top of baseline 10% tariffs, select countries
So the rates in the table, are added to 10%, so, for instance, the actual tariff on Korean goods is 35%?
It means 6 less consequential trading partners were tariffed by 10%. Before the market closed 10% was mentioned as the expectation across the board with a few exceptions.
I had to go over that bit a few times. TIG was talking about a comment made today, by a guy who had worked with Iacocca. My seat of the pants suspicion is he is talking about Bob Lutz, who is still alive at 93.
Yes, futures trading showed a sharp downturn across the markets - and especially acute in shares of companies exposed to a lot of imports, like AAPL and WMT.
The market was up today on hopes that the tariffs might come lower than expected. The market fell sharply after they were announced, because the tariffs came in at the high end of possible outcomes.
Let’s not fool ourselves that any such ‚sophistication‘ was considered, it would just be entirely out of character.
The following sounds a lot more realistic::
According to analysts and later White House clarification, each country’s tariff rate was based on the U.S. trade deficit with that country, divided by the value of that country’s exports to the U.S. Trump then cut that number in half, saying he was being “kind.”
While Trump originally claimed the tariffs would reflect not just trade deficits but also non-monetary barriers and “cheating,” experts believe the administration used a quick, simple formula to push the policy through. …
Also keeping in mind the country list has about 180 entries - cool, the US against the rest of the world.
