The public could have used Amazon’s price transparency. Tariffs are taxes, and it’s helpful to know how policy choices affect final prices. Some shoppers might say the additional cost is worth it to support Mr. Trump’s policy. But there’s no denying that they’re paying, and everyone is better off knowing how much.
Ride-sharing platforms understand this dynamic. After each trip, riders get an itemized bill that shows how much of their fare went to tolls and political fees. So do hotels when they list local tax.
Mr. Trump likes to say foreign exporters bear all the costs of tariffs, with none passed on to customers. Economists disagree, as in a 2020 study showing that final consumers bore the burden of Mr. Trump’s first-term tariffs.
Ms. Leavitt accused Amazon of playing politics selectively, asking why the company didn’t propose a similar feature to display the cost of President Biden’s inflation. She’s right that businesses might have protested more about the cost of progressive governance. But the comparison overlooks the unique simplicity of tariff costs. Like taxes, tariffs often add a precise dollar figure to a sticker price. Voters who pay little attention to the macroeconomy will notice a direct markup on items they buy.
Consumers are already feeling the tariff pain, whether or not retailers quantify it on their websites. White House denials won’t change that, but repealing the tariffs would.
The administration has repeatedly assured Americans that its tariffs are a key element in bringing about the country’s coming golden age. If Amazon were to do this (it seems that they are not) it would highlight the sacrifices made by American consumers chipping in to pay the tariffs that are going to bring this country so much prosperity. They deserve the recognition.
Kyle Smith tweets: (HT Scott Lincicome)
Amazon does me the favor of identifying the 8.875 percent NY tax. I don’t know why they would fail to point out a 145 percent Trump tax on goods from China.
Jack Nicastro decries Trump’s Bidenesque economic ignorance in the treatment of AI. Two slices:
President Donald Trump pledged to remove “barriers to American leadership in artificial intelligence” in a January executive order by reversing the Biden administration’s precautionary approach to AI. Despite this order, the Trump administration is repeating its predecessor’s mistakes by allowing export controls issued by former President Joe Biden to take effect.
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Restricting the sale of advanced semiconductors doesn’t only harm domestic tech firms such as Intel and Nvidia, but the American economy writ large. “Closing the door on all sorts of international trade opportunities,” explains [Matthew] Mittelsteadt, “means we’re closing the door on the markets that are needed to reap revenue on the things that we invent.” Not generating revenue means the U.S. “can’t invest in R&D,” he adds, “and if we can’t invest in R&D we’re going to start falling behind.”
Jim Geraghty warns that “tariffs are already damaging the supply chain.” Two slices:
Most of the time, what’s said at the meetings of the Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissioners probably doesn’t have much impact on your life. But the assessment of Port of Los Angeles Executive Director Gene Seroka at their Thursday meeting should make every American consumer sit up and take notice. The most spectacular self-inflicted economic wound of all time is already here.
“We are beginning to see the flow of cargo to the port of Los Angeles slow,” Seroka said. “It’s my prediction that in two weeks’ time, arrivals will drop by 35 percent, as essentially all shipments out of China from major retailers and manufacturers has ceased and cargo coming out of Southeast Asia locations is much softer than normal with the tariffs now in place.”
That’s just the bad news for U.S. consumers who are seeking to purchase goods made in China and other Southeast Asian nations; the outlook for Americans whose livelihoods depend on exporting goods to other countries is even darker.
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When the ships stop coming in, it creates a domino effect of bad economic news. Fewer ships means there’s less work for port workers. That also means less work for truckers. (On Wednesday, trucking industry analyst Craig Fuller noted that the amount of trucks leaving Los Angeles was comparable to Thanksgiving and Christmas Day, usually the lowest-volume days of the year.) This also means fewer goods ending up on store shelves. Limited supply and steady demand mean price increases.
In celebrating the first 100 days of Trump’s presidency, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at a briefing on Monday that Trump is using tariffs as leverage to force other countries into negotiating with the United States, though no major deals have been announced.
Gramm, who has lived in the Texas Hill Country for more than 20 years, said Trump is leaning into a series of “verifiably false grievances” that make it sound like free trade has been bad for the American economy when the opposite is true.
Instead, he’s backing other economists who issued a statement earlier this month that free trade leads to higher per-capita incomes, faster rates of economic growth and more economic efficiency.
Forgive me, if you will, for shuffling swiftly past all the glitter and diversions and obsequious fawning, and for instead electing to focus on such anachronistic and prosaic questions as “why?” and “what?” But I would be forever indebted if a single quasi-literate person in this country could explain to me what the hell was the point in Donald Trump’s relentless and often vehement insistence that Canada ought to become the 51st state.
“It was funny” won’t suffice, I’m afraid. I am told as a matter of unlovely routine that Trump’s ongoing presence in our national life is necessary because the alternatives are feckless and weak and incapable of conserving anything, and so, with that in mind, I must sedulously press the point: What did Trump get out of this ploy? What did America gain? What did Republican voters achieve? What was improved for conservatism, or nationalism, or MAGA, or whatever other Trump-coded movements are the supposed beneficiaries of his maneuvers? Where, as the old advertisement liked to inquire, is the beef?
Because, from where I’m sitting, the whole incident looks monumentally, comprehensively, impressively stupid.
GMU Econ alum David Youngberg is correct: in the real world, trade-offs are inescapable.
