Will Trump’s Tariffs Help or Hurt?

Donald Trump’s announcement that he’s going to hike tariffs on goods coming in from China, Canada and Mexico until and unless these countries stop the illegal movement of fentanyl into the United States may be the single, dumbest political strategy that anyone has proposed since Rand Paul said he wanted to abolish the Federal Reserve.

Know what would happen if the Federal Reserve was shut down? Nobody could cash a check, nobody could use a credit card or an ATM, no business could meet its payroll, and nobody’s savings account would be secure.

Go ahead Rand baby, show us how fucking dumb you are the next time around, okay?

What would happen if Trump put a 25% tariff on Mexican and Canadian goods? The result would be a massive increase in what consumers have to pay at the supermarket checkout because the first items which would reflect this new tax policy would be food.

In 2022, Americans spent $810 billion on store-bought food. Here’s the value of some of the food we imported from Mexico that year: tomatoes — $2.5 billion, avocados — $2.1 billion, peppers — $1.4 billion, strawberries — $897 million, cucumbers — $607 million, which adds up to $5 billion and change, and that’s just getting started.

Know why we import more than $30 billion in food products from Mexico each year? Because…