If tariffs are bad, why does every country tariff US-made products so heavily?
In most free trade agreements many products are without tariffs, some have quotas and others yet have tariff. For example, under CUSMA Canada have no tariffs on US made apparel and footwear, diary is under quota and steel has 25-50% tariffs. But then if you hear someone who lies a lot and has an agenda they will only tell you about steel tariffs and make you think that all US made products are under tariff.
That's an easy question. The answer is "they don't."
USMCA/NAFTA guaranteed free trade with Mexico and Canada.
Pre-2025, there was no blanket tariff on US goods in Europe. They tariffed some agricultural goods at 11%. Industrial goods were in single digits.
The tariff numbers that Trump purports (e.g. blanket 30% tariffs on Switzerland) are in no way proportional to their tariffs on US goods. It's just false.
The lie that other countries had massive blanket tariffs on all US goods is being sold to the American public to justify massive so-called "reciprocal" tariffs that (a) violate existing trade agreements, (b) make things expense for the American consumer, (c) don't necessary encourage new businesses in the US.
I just want to point out that this "reciprocal" nonsense was in no way calculated or strategic. The chart/table they showed was literally LLM-generated and no one could explain how they got those numbers. It's a complete circus and we're sitting here refuting bullshit everyday.
Not quite. The big board percentages were effectively us (imports - exports) / imports * 0.5 ~ fuzzy adjustment based on feels. Your point remains theyre amateurish and bely a lack of any grounding to actual foreign import duties. But that is a direct way of representing a mercantilist world view where net imports bad, exports strong.
https://www.investopedia.com/trade-experts-question-trump-te...
Trump also either purposely or stupidly considers the VAT a tariff instead of a sales tax.
All Trump's policies assume he's playing a single-move game where his is the only move. It turns out it's an infinite game and the other side actually has free will and competent decision makers. He can't just wish people into the cornfield as he promised.
Even if there were massive tariffs towards the US, these are clearly politically motivated economic attacks, not motivated by economics. And that's not a thing an ally would do, regardless.