Many years ago, I had a nice lunch with a group of European customs officials. They were swapping stories about techniques that had been used in their countries to minimize the import of low-cost products that threatened employment in their own countries.

Mexican president clarifies country will ‘not close borders’ just hours after Trump declares MAJOR victory by claiming she said the EXACT opposite

Quit whining about the border – close it and issue warnings that anyone crossing illegally will be shot—women and children included.

Sheinbaum confirmed that she would be immediately addressing migration, including a caravan of migrants that was headed for the U.S.

Yes, but … and this is a yuuuge but … corporations and companies will do anything to avoid tarifffs … well there’s a caveat … US companies will do anything except to build US plants and employ US workers. This is not wholly, but mostly.

Harley Davidson is truly a good example even though it’s used as bad example under Reagan … Harley Davidson decided to move US production on several bikes to Thailand. Thailand had a massive tariff and at the same time gave incentives to foreign investment.

Granted, it’s more complicated, but if you tariff and give incentives, you can get very good results.

Harley is not the only one to do such things.

This article proclaims Trump’s tariff is wrong, but its assertion fact belies that claim …

https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/4949406-trump-tariffs-harley-davidson/amp/

What? They the only one … nope … every friggin Japanese auto maker did this in response to Reagan’s tariffs

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/06/26/business/japan-american-honda-hnk-intl

“To avoid the quotas of the 1980s, more Japanese automakers decided to move manufacturing on to American shores and establish alliances with domestic car makers.”

This is what companies do to avoid tariffs. It’s a maxim of going towards the path of least resistance. And it makes $$$ for them.

What’s ironic and sad in my opinion is US car companies have been exporting manufacturing and jobs to countries like high cost Canada and low cost Mexico with no tariff issues for half a century or more.

With a hint of (2) and (4).

“There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.”

For a longer treatment of an economist’s view of tariffs and a bunch of other current issues, please consider reading Scott Sumner’s recent post entitled “The ‘It Doesn’t Matter’ Perspective” (https://scottsumner.substack.com/p/the-it-doesnt-matter-perspective).

Sumner is an economist who became well-known for his interesting take on the financial crisis. I finally had to quit reading his blog after he contracted a virulent case of Trump derangement syndrome. Luckily, this post is free of that, and has plenty of those anti-commonsense arguments that economists like to make. It’s interesting. Unfortunately, I studied economics a million years ago, so I’m not qualified to critique Sumner’s post.

For those in a hurry, here’s what Sumner has to say about tariffs:

“I’ve seen other pundits make all sorts of arguments against tariffs, claiming that they will indirectly hurt our firms by driving up the cost of inputs such as auto parts, or that other countries will retaliate. Those claims may be true, but there’s a much simpler explanation for why tariffs don’t have the impact their proponents expect; our current account balance reflects the gap between domestic saving and domestic investment (which is a negative number in the US.)

A tariff that raised a great deal of revenue could conceivably reduce the deficit by raising national saving. But the sort of populist politicians that favor tariffs also tend to run massive budget deficits, so it’s unlikely that any plausible US tariff policy would actually reduce the trade deficit. For example, the deficit did not improve as a result of the Trump/Biden tariffs. Tariffs tend to appreciate the domestic currency, offsetting any competitive advantage to domestic firms from higher taxes on imports.”

I thought that the way the news item stated the tariffs was odd. “An additional 10% on China.” Additional to what? Apparently, as stated in The Hill, there are tariffs that Trump placed on China in his first term that are still in effect. Additional to those tariffs.

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5010163-brian-schatz-trump-tariffs/