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Thanks, Trump

By adamg on Fri, 01/31/2025 - 3:49pm

From Gov. Healey on impending tariffs on stuff imported from Canada, Mexico and China:

The number one issue facing the American people is high costs. The President’s tariffs represent nothing more than a giant price hike on the cost of groceries, clothes, phones, housing, and energy. We estimate that electricity costs in New England alone will go up by as much as $200 million a year. Additionally, we rely on these countries for lumber and building materials, which means housing costs will rise, and housing production could stall. We need a partner in the White House who will lower costs for families and businesses in Massachusetts, and all we’ve seen thus far from this new administration are actions that will do the exact opposite.

Tariffs on Canada are expected to impact the dairy industry and raise the cost of milk, cheese and butter. Canada is also one of the largest suppliers of softwood lumber in the U.S., which means increased costs for housing, construction and home renovation. Tariffs on Canada will also impact the price of cars and car parts, energy, and fish and seafood. Tariffs on Mexico are expected to increase the cost of agricultural products like fruits, vegetables, avocados and tomatoes, as well as cars and car parts, beer and tequila, TVs and other electronics. Tariffs on China will increase the cost of smartphones, laptops, TVs and other electronics, furniture, clothing and toys. These tariffs also raise the risk of retaliatory tariffs on exports, which could be devastating for American businesses.

Free tagging: 
Maura Healey


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Comments

By cybah on Fri, 01/31/2025 - 4:34pm.

What these morons.. both in the white house and their supporters do not understand how tariffs actually work. They can't seem to understand that these tarriffs are baked into pricing, so if the tariff goes up, so does the price of an item.

Yet they seem to think this is some sort of direct "payment" from countries and that by increasing these you can 'strong arm' a country into doing what they want.

The jokes on them tho because the cost will just be passed onto the consumer.

Yet Diaper Don ran on a campaign to 'lower groceries' yet in the end, his little manbaby tariff game is just going to cost everyone a whole lot more.

Add this whole 'round'em up and send'em home' is going to do wonders for the agricultural, construction, and manufacturing industries. There will be no one to do the jobs, regardless of what Diaper Don says, no one wants to work for pennies. So the jobs will be left unfilled. thus leaving produce on the ground to rot, unfinished construction projects, and slow down in manufacturing.

If Diaper Don's goal was to drive the economy off a cliff, we're heading toward that cliff right now at approximately 88mph. Too bad we're not in a delorean, and we can't go back to October 26th, 1985. Hell, I'd settle to go back to October 21, 2015 at this point.

By ScottB on Fri, 01/31/2025 - 5:04pm.

If the wages go up. That's actually good for lower-income workers if they end with some leverage to demand higher wages. Prices will go up in the same way as they would if the minimum wage were to be raised -- except that the minimum wage doesn't necessarily apply to the undocumented who are paid under the table.

Tariffs get passed on to the consumer, but probably not quite the full amount. The foreign producer has to eat some of the cost by lowering their price if they're producing goods for which there are competitors without tariffs -- think tomatoes from California vs. Mexico. Longer-term you might see shifts in production -- like Apple making iPhones in Vietnam or India or Brazil instead of China. Or you might even see the production of some goods move back to the U.S.

By ScottB on Fri, 01/31/2025 - 5:06pm.

o/~ Avocados from Mexico! o/~

By Frelmont on Fri, 01/31/2025 - 6:58pm.

Avocados are not a socially responsible purchase.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/13/americas/avocado-cartel-us-mexico-intl-la...

By SwirlyGrrl on Fri, 01/31/2025 - 5:25pm.

Take away the farm workers and food industry labor force, then drop heavy tarriffs on imported food during the winter. Add in a burgeoning epidemic affecting cattle, dairy, and poultry/egg production.

What could possibly go wrong? Oh, SO MUCH WINNING!

You have to be pretty blindered to think that any of this is a good thing or even a minorly bad thing. Wow.

By cybah on Fri, 01/31/2025 - 5:41pm.

Tariffs get passed on to the consumer, but probably not quite the full amount.

Even a 1% increase of prices is too much. How high did inflation take us in the past 2 years? Anymore will break us. Particularly when its a price increase no one asked for, not even greedy corporations.

I just spent $200 dollars at the grocery store last night and I still have no idea why it cost so much.

By Friartuck on Fri, 01/31/2025 - 6:49pm.

$180.00

By robo on Fri, 01/31/2025 - 5:14pm.

And now you also support slave/exploited labor so you don’t pay as much at the grocery store?!

Why anyone would be against paying more for a good to support America is beyond me.

By SwirlyGrrl on Fri, 01/31/2025 - 5:27pm.

I have. It is grueling, but also takes a fair bit of skill and experience.

Somehow I don't expect you to have an answer for how all the US crops are going to be harvested ... unless these are the "black jobs" that Trump speaks of being taken by hispanic workers.

I'm sure the robots being able to harvest are just around the corner waiting LOLOLOLOLOLOL.

By robo on Fri, 01/31/2025 - 5:59pm.

Methinks you make up half the shit you post here.

I’ll mark you down as a sweatshop supporter though.

By SwirlyGrrl on Fri, 01/31/2025 - 9:24pm.

People who know me know. Do the u-pick berry thing with me sometime. You'll see.

I'm older, raised poor, and don't spend all my time sitting on my ass in a car, driving in circles to be seen driving.

But answer the question, pollyanna - who is going to do these jobs? And how much will they be paid, again?

AND ... how much more will other workers need to be paid to pay for that? By whom?

I mean, I'd love to put an end to sweatshop and exploitative farm labor - I'd just love to hear your ideas on that and we can discuss it. But I'm betting you don't have any serious or practical concepts or systems to offer. This most definitely would require an end to extractive capitalism as we know it, and I doubt you can get around that, mentally.

I'm putting you down as a supporter of for-profit prison labor, just like Hillary.

By robo on Fri, 01/31/2025 - 9:33pm.

A path for citizenship if workers are that needed that bad and (I know you and cybah won’t like this) pays a living wage raising your grocery bills. Gasp! Have some time minimum like loan forgiveness for teachers. Thoughts?

By SwirlyGrrl on Sat, 02/01/2025 - 9:38am.

I mean, you probably have them already (/s) but always remember that Jesus didn't have electricity either.

By robo on Sat, 02/01/2025 - 1:03pm.

Since you asked - I have a 32kW natural gas powered house generator that has an automatic transfer switch so other than a quick flicker can’t even tell I’ve lost power. I’ll be fine.

By Username Unknown on Fri, 01/31/2025 - 11:20pm.

UHub Virtue Signaling Queen

By SwirlyGrrl on Sat, 02/01/2025 - 9:39am.

Obsessed much?

Robo was the one virtue signaling here with the "if you don't like tarrifs ..." bullshit, dearie.

That might require actual reading, though.

By Username Unknown on Sat, 02/01/2025 - 10:22am.

Thanks for playing

By cybah on Fri, 01/31/2025 - 5:38pm.

n/t

By robo on Fri, 01/31/2025 - 5:58pm.

Close your eyes and take a deep breath.

By cybah on Fri, 01/31/2025 - 7:53pm.

No I don't. It's called calling people out who are just being assholes.

And considering the events of the past week or so, my patience and understanding has run out. So I don't fucking care at all.

Don't like what I have to say, don't fucking reply to my comments. But you seem to not only cannot help yourself but reply, you add nothing to the conversation at all, except make it a personal attack.

You are nothing but a shit starter. So I'll renew what I said last week to you.. Go fold it in four counters and shove it up your ass.

By mg on Fri, 01/31/2025 - 5:50pm.

This lesson was learned decades ago when it was made harder for migrant workers to enter this country. Agriculture jobs went unfilled. Even if wages get raised, it's difficult work and seasonal, with no job security.

By cybah on Fri, 01/31/2025 - 7:54pm.

Just look at Florida a year or two ago. All the citrus groves had rotting fruit and construction projects sat unfinished. Because no one, except migrants wanted to work for poor pay and crappy working conditions.

By SwirlyGrrl on Fri, 01/31/2025 - 9:26pm.

People like robo don't want to pay what it would really cost to make those jobs attractive. Not to mention they have zero idea what those jobs are like or what skills they actually require.

They just sit in their cars eating drive-thru food produced by migrants and exploited minorities, obsessing over birthrates.

By robo on Fri, 01/31/2025 - 9:37pm.

I’ll happily pay way more for american made/not made with slave labor. You just complain about how that will raise your grocery bills at Costco while splitting things with other people (I find this very odd behavior btw).

I can’t remember the last time I went through a drive-thru. I try my best to not put any of that poison in my body.

By MrZip on Fri, 01/31/2025 - 10:29pm.

It's nice you can afford free-range/grass-fed/organic. But not everyone can. A more likely scenario is that there just isn't as much food. Period.

Remember in 2020 when farmers (especially CAFOs) slaughtered millions of head of livestock and burned/buried it because COVID had shut down the packing plants? One guess as to who was in charge then. That's where we're headed, the plants will shut down b/c the migrants got shipped off/scared away and white families just aren't steering their kids to careers on the killing floor.

By SwirlyGrrl on Sat, 02/01/2025 - 9:40am.

Username unknown take note.

Note that Costco is a bad example of a box store for illustrating your virtue signal - plenty of organic produce and American made stuff to be found there. They have actually moved the needle on better production methods and US made goods because they have created such a huge, lucrative marketplace for them.

I know this because ...

I also didn't complain about the prices there, either. I cut my costs and my kids costs by splitting cases of stuff with them now that they have their own households. Costco welcomed the unions, and my cousin made a great living working there until Bob personally lured him away (Bob's Red Mill - RIP Bob).

Consuming less overall is good, too. But all of this requires you to have enough money to invest in good quality stuff the old money Yankee way and take care of it. I wasn't able to front the cost for quality when I had to pick berries, beans, and rake filberts for school clothing money. Thankfully my high school made us take two semesters of personal finance.

I hope you have a Walden or Lilac Hedge subscription if you eat meat. Buying from local family farms cuts a whole lot of human and animal and land abuse out of the equation. If you drink coffee, Yego in Somerville has a family farm to table supply chain setup - they opened a cafe and sell beans that their extended family in Africa grows and roasts.

By jorf on Fri, 01/31/2025 - 10:17pm.

I think the tariffs are very dumb. Free trade is the way. That said, we don’t know how long this will last. Much of it is a negotiation tactic, even if often foolhardy. At times it’s been working. Ironically, Trump is closer to Bernie than probably most other politicians (that’s a negative in my book)

Still, there’s any number of things making goods more expensive than they should be. See local housing regs by all the home team. See New England burning more oil than natural gas because Cuomo wouldn’t allow pipelines (aka more cost and pollution without them) and stupid fracking bans.

There’s a lot of blame to go around, it would make me roll my eyes way less to articles and comments like these if people paid attention beyond when Trump does it.

The DNC ultimately is why we got him for the second time, and they all need a hard dose of Stephen A Smith. Going to be JD in 2028 if all they can do is bang the idiotic one note “they’re Nazis!” drum they seem to be, which shockingly doesn’t apply to the actual Nazis on campuses lately.

Hysterics one week in help nobody. People are tired of it and totally inept media, even liberals like myself.

By SwirlyGrrl on Sat, 02/01/2025 - 10:34am.

The DNC has been run for too long by wall street parasite neoliberals who think they can game anything and everything if they just get rich people to give them enough money.

The only thing SAS knows how to run is his mouth. He has some good points but he is also naïve about the realities of governance.

They need a very hard dose of Bernie and Liz and Katie Porter and AOC. They need to start actually listening to constituents and folks on the ground, not their take from the stock market.

By Will LaTulippe on Sat, 02/01/2025 - 9:11pm.

Laments voting for Kamala, even though he had seven candidates on his New Jersey ballot.

Of course, the debate that his employer sponsored only had two of them, so maybe that's where he got the idea. Imagine getting your information on who's running for president from Disney.

By Frelmont on Sat, 02/01/2025 - 10:16am.

Wow! I guess everybody is a Republican when it comes to not having to (directly) pay for benefits for the help (and you can afford to employ help…on farms, in your practice’s office, in your homes, &c. &c...)

The original sin here is the open borders without an effective pathway for seasonal employment. As cold-blooded as the Administration is, they are consonant with the law. Open borders were not a kindness, but rather a cynical and self-serving Primrose Path.

Open borders condemns migrants to build their life upon sand, not rock.

By SwirlyGrrl on Sat, 02/01/2025 - 10:24am.

Some of us make some effort to consume reasonably and change the systems around labor and poverty at the roots by supporting organized labor, and are professionally engaged in worker health and safety standards. However, doing this as a consumer can be a luxury and takes money that many people don't have.

Tell us you have a trust fund ...

You also can't buy something that simply isn't available given the nature of oligarchic monopolies on things like cell phone components. Fairphone is a prime example of that, as is the lack of modern high speed intercity train networks in the US (see Elmo's vaporware interference to get high speed rail killed in California).

There is a long-standing pathway for seasonal employment migration. It is part of the H1 series. The trouble is that the GOP loves to grandstand by messing with it despite the impact this has on red states - see what happened in the earlier Trump for details. The GOP has also continuously stalled attempts to rationalize the migration system and paths to citizenship - Trump did this very recently because he wanted to continue to grandstand on it during the election, and even W's attempts to do so were scuttled by Gringrich's antics.

By Anonymous on Sat, 02/01/2025 - 12:56pm.

"Over the long run, tariffs shrink the size of the economy by reducing work and investment. That’s because tariffs increase the relative prices of imported and protected goods, and after paying those higher prices, people have less income left to spend elsewhere. Effectively, this means tariffs reduce the after-tax value of income by reducing how much consumption people can afford. The reduction in the after-tax value of income reduces incentives to work, which reduces hours worked and, in turn, capital investment. Fewer hours worked and a smaller capital stock result in a permanently lower level of output and income.

Additionally, tariffs lead to dynamic inefficiencies, which reduce productivity. By creating a protected domestic market, tariffs blunt competitive pressures that otherwise force firms to remain innovative. Instead of needing to constantly search for ways to improve processes and meet consumer demands, firms can sit back and enjoy higher profits from protection. Past (and ongoing) episodes of protection, both anecdotally and empirically, reveal that protected firms tend to use their higher profits to lobby for more and longer protection, rather than for increased research and development or capital expenditure."

How Will Trump’s Universal and China Tariffs Impact the Economy? https://taxfoundation.org/blog/trump-tariffs-impac...

If tariff revenue funds tax cuts for the rich and corporations, that's one massive wealth transfer facilitated by 25% tax on consumer goods