Overseas media attention! The tariff stick hurts the United States itself.
For the US government, the tariff increase is not only to curb the development of China and maintain "America first", but also has another consideration. According to The New York Times, since May this year, the U.S. Department of Commerce has received 20,000 applications from enterprises to reduce or increase tariffs on steel products, and at present, none of them have been approved. On the other hand, the two largest steel companies in the United States have successfully helped the government reject the requests of hundreds of American companies for tariff reduction and exemption on the grounds that tariffs are protecting national security and stimulating more domestic steel production.
The report pointed out that several senior officials of the US government have deep ties with the steel industry. For example, US Secretary of Commerce Ross bought and operated several steel companies and later sold them for profit. When Wright Heze, the American Trade Representative, was a private lawyer, his clients included American steel companies and other steel manufacturers. As for Navarro, director of the White House Trade Committee, he got a $1 million sponsorship from Newco, the second largest steel company in the United States, when he filmed the documentary Fatal China.
Can increasing tariffs really protect American national security? American government officials may not be sure yet, but they are at least convinced that increasing tariffs will benefit them. Based on this consideration, they turn a blind eye to the sufferings of American enterprises and consumers.
Just these days, bad news has been coming from the United States:
The American Basic Electronics Company announced on the 6th that it would close its TV factory in South Carolina in two months, and cut 126 jobs from 134 in the factory before, because the US government "imposed tariffs on many goods from China, including the main parts of TV sets", which led to increased costs. According to the data of Peterson Institute for International Economics, if the United States imposes a 25% tariff on cars around the world, about 195,000 American workers will lose their jobs within one to three years. If other countries take countermeasures, the United States will lose about 624,000 jobs.
A survey released by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta on the 7th showed that tariff concerns forced about one-fifth of American enterprises to re-evaluate, postpone or abandon their investment plans. The agency pointed out that at present, the negative impact of trade friction on American enterprise investment is mainly concentrated in manufacturing industry, and if the situation escalates further, the negative impact of American enterprise investment may continue to expand.
The price of American milk, which is highly dependent on overseas export markets, also fell to $15/100 pounds due to the trade war. Sarah Lloyd, a dairy farmer in the midwest of Wisconsin, told the media that her family had a dairy farm for nearly a hundred years, and now it loses about $30,000 a month. If it doesn’t last, "there will be no cows milking here next year."
From Coca-Cola to RV, from toys to clothing, the domestic consumer goods market in the United States is blowing up the price surge under the shadow of "American national security". Just after the US announced its decision to impose a 25% tariff on $16 billion of goods imported from China, some American netizens pointed out that this means that the cost of American consumers will rise by 25%, and this burden falls unevenly on low-income groups because they consume a higher proportion of China products. In a recent report, Bank of America Merrill Lynch pointed out that the US government’s trade policy is a repeat of the bad policies of the United States in the 1980s, and American consumers will be the biggest losers in the trade war as they were 30 years ago.
Obviously, the US government’s tariff stick is hurting the United States itself and the people who claim to create welfare for it. In the growing opposition to tariff increases, can the U.S. government do something that conforms to the people’s hearts?
A number of overseas media forwarded "International Sharp Review" articles:
Russian Siberian News Network forwarded on August 9, 2018
"European Times" German website forwarded on August 8, 2018
Italian Radio We website (facebook, Twitter) forwarded on August 8, 2018.
Radio Spain International website forwarded on August 9, 2018
India’s "Daily Morning News" website was forwarded on August 9, 2018
Turkish Economic Observer Network forwarded on August 9, 2018
Kazakhstan’s "Industry News" website was forwarded on August 9, 2018
Portuguese news APP(facebook, Twitter) forwarded on August 9, 2018.
Hong Kong Ta Kung Pao was published on August 10, 2018
Hong Kong Wen Wei Po was published on August 10, 2018.