Posted on 03/03/2018 11:11:12 AM PST by SeekAndFind
It's amazing. Even a topic as dry as tariffs gets the press's bias wheels turning. Here's one example, from Reuters:
Toyota Motor Corp said on Friday U.S. tariffs on imported steel and aluminum would substantially raise costs and therefore prices of cars and trucks sold in America.
"The (U.S.) Administration's decision to impose substantial steel and aluminum tariffs will adversely impact automakers, the automotive supplier community and consumers," the automaker told Reuters.
Toyota added that more than 90 percent of the steel and aluminum purchased for cars built in the United States is sourced from the country.
Substantially? In making this claim, somehow, the reporter did not ask Toyota what the substantial cost increase would be. I would think that would be a valuable piece of information, since the average price of a car or truck today is around $36,000. So I thought I would do some research to find what "substantial" means.
The current price of steel is around $800 per ton, and the price of aluminum is 97 cents per pound. The average car uses around one ton of steel and close to 400 pounds of aluminum. The average truck uses around one and one half tons of steel and just under 400 pounds of aluminum.
So if the price of the steel in a car went up the whole 25%, which it won't, and the price of aluminum went up the entire 10%, the cost would go up by about $240, or less than five tenths of a percent. The cost of a truck would go up around $340. According to Edmunds, the average car loan today is six and a half years. or 78 months, so the average payment would be up around $3 per month.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Sorry. The retaliation has already started and it is we who are doing it!!!!
Last figures I knew of few months ago were nada to importa car from Mexico. Twenty five thousamd to export a car to Mexico.
NAFTA was never fair trade. It was designed to make America a third world economy, keep the already third worlders poor and make the Globalists rich.
Assuming your figures are right, so what? So Mexico doesn’t want its citizens to drive an American car. Big deal. That’s their loss.
Why should we penalize our own citizens by putting a tariff on cars made in Mexico? Instead, let them make cars using cheap labor and let our citizens enjoy the benefits of that cheap labor, i.e., less expensive cars.
Mexicans end up doing the work that can’t be automated easily while American employees end up running robotic assembly lines and getting paid far more than they would if they were just doing the grunt work the Mexicans are doing.
If you do not see the error of your thinking, I question you understanding of fair trade. If you do know that error I question your motive for posting such anti-conservative drivel.
Inflation is caused by more money chasing the same amount of products.
I figured the cost would be something like that...on the order of 1%. If the Democrats and Neocons are REALLY that upset by this cost, then remove the mandate requiring Air Bags. Just SCRAP the damn things...probably save at least $1000 per car (sadly the huge billions of dollars developing them and the people who have been decapitated or had their face re-arranged by airbags...nothing can be done there).
People may not remember, but Air Bags can into existence because people wouldn’t wear seat belts. So the Left said “Ok, we’ll have ‘passive restraints’ so people don’t need seat belts”...then air bags came in and guess what, seat belts are needed - so the laws are now passed, and the vast majority of people do wear seat belts.
So scrap the damn Air Bags.
Toyota added that more than 90 percent of the steel and aluminum purchased for cars built in the United States is sourced from the country.
Not bad they will spend more money on flushing the the increas of beer no problem.
The cost of a new car will likely go up MORE than the figures given because of the increased prices of steel & aluminum. This gives the manufacturer the convenient EXCUSE for the increased prices.
My understanding of “fair trade” is that it’s anti-conservative drivel.
It can be used to justify just about any tariff or quota you want to implement. Someone’s ox is always getting gored. The one that screams the loudest or, more likely, makes the largest campaign contribution, gets satisfaction.
Look at the current tariff imbroglio. Certain steelmakers benefit. Car makers and any producer of other products made from steel are essentially penalized in the world market. You can play this game forever, and it certainly isn’t conservative. More like the power plays that liberals are always making.
>>So, whats the problem for Toyota? Tariffs will have almost no effect on them.<<
Oh? They’ll have to raise the price of American made Toyotas because the steel and aluminum they use to make them will go up in price. That will directly impact American consumers and will also make American Toyotas less likely to be exported to other countries.
And if other countries decide to play the same game, they just might put tariffs on American made cars, further damaging Toyota’s American made cars.
President Trump has implemented a lot of his agenda already, but this part of it should never see the light of day. Unfortunately, it might. If you have an investment portfolio containing stocks, you might want to reassess how much you have invested in them. Trade wars can be brutal to stock markets.
>>Inflation is caused by more money chasing the same amount of products.<<
I agree with you. A trade war won’t cause inflation. It will, however, cause impoverishment of the citizens in the countries that participate.
Trade between countries will diminish and prices of favored goods and affected goods (steel-favored, cars-affected) will rise so other goods will fall in price as people have less money left to purchase them after purchasing, say, a car. The net effect will be no inflation, lower wages due to reduced economic activity worldwide, and a fall in total economic activity.
American farmers, for example, would be severely impacted by a worldwide trade war, possibly resulting in their turning the red states blue in time. This really is a road we shouldn’t want to travel.
Where do you get that idea from? Conservatism like no other political philosophy( at least that strain of true conservatism derived from historical natural law and passed to us in the English Common Law) understands the concept of giving everyone “ their due”.
In a fair5 trade scenario each party benefits. To assure that is to give each their due.
Obviously, America is not benefiting from NAFTA in the automobile trade I mentioned earlier. The best way to remedy it in such a way to give America(ns) their due is an equalizing, but not punitive tariff. That appears to be wwheat Trump is doing.
I watched NAFTA being formulated by European professors of law with no concept of Justice under the (Natural) Law. It stank then and stinks now.
Who benefits ? And why ?
her assertion would have increased the cost of the 36K vehicle by $2,250 instead of the $340 the author got by using real statistics instead of a general "25%"...and her assertion was designed for folks to think that the increase would have raised the vehicles price by 25% or $9K if they didn't do the 25% of 25% that her statement required.
There has to be big money to be made with trade deficits that the really big money people are not wanting us to know about so they obfuscate and talk about a disaster and will never admit that we win in the end.
Canada 16%
Brazil 13%
S Korea 10%
Mexico 9%
Russia 9%
Turkey 7%
Japan 5%
Taiwan 4%
Germany 3%
India 2%
A country often mentioned on these trade threads is missing.
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