Editorial: Trump’s tariffs

President-elect Donald Trump tagged Iowa’s three leading export customers — Canada, Mexico and China — with tariffs because immigrants and fentanyl are flowing into the United States. Mexico and Canada will get tagged with 25% tariffs on Inauguration Day, while China gets a 10% tariff.

Trump is so full of it, and we are so stupid.

“It is time for them to pay a very big price!” Trump said Monday.

Actually, we pay the price. Farmers and agribusinesses pay in lower soy and pork exports, which tanks prices. During his trade war with China in his first term, Trump laid about $100 billion on agri-industry over three years to help make up for lost exports. Most of the money came from the Commodity Credit Corporation, which is funded by you. Farmers called it their “Trump Bump.” They were welfare queens on his bandwagon. They think they can be again. It’s a big reason they voted for him. They want to go back to farming the government, since “freedom to farm” generally results in lower prices.

Next time Farm Bureau tells you it believes in free markets, break a rib laughing.

Age burdens us with the memory of Democrats Tom Harkin and Dick Gephardt sponsoring a farm bill that was protectionist. The Reagan acolytes said they were pinko for not being fully free trade. We needed China so we could sell more ag commodities at higher prices, recall. Now, protectionism is in again in places like West Des Moines because Trump says so. He’s a genius, you know.

Mexico’s new president, Claudia Scheinbaum, probably is smarter than Trump and all his Cabinet members combined. She is a PhD scientist who studied in Berkley which, despite its liberal politics, does accomplish a lot of notable science and scientists. She is not anti-American.

“President Trump, it isn’t with threats or tariffs that we resolve the migratory phenomenon or the abuse of drugs in the United States,” Scheinbaum wrote to Trump in a letter. “What’s needed to confront these great challenges is cooperation and understanding.”

Trump reordered the North American Free Trade Agreement in 2020. It was his work. Now he is attacking it, suggesting that the framework is not effective.

US manufacturers relied on that agreement when investing in plants. GM makes a lot of cars in Canada and Mexico that are bound for the United States. How will your Chevy dealer feel about a 25% increase in price on the Blazer?

This is what we asked for. Farmers want the Chinese market, but they want somebody who gets tough with them. Iowa will never recover what it lost in the first Trump trade war in China. The planet cannot recover the rain forest that was ripped up as China sought Brazil as a most-favored trading partner for soy instead of the USA. Those ties still bind. Brazil is now the top soy supplier. Iowa is out of the picture. We voted for that.

Maybe that is a good thing. Maybe we should shrink export markets to conserve our own resources. Maybe we should sell less pork. Maybe we should chase off the immigrants from Storm Lake. Houses would be cheaper. That’s it, get comfortable with the idea.

Maybe you should pay a lot more for a car built in Mexico. If you did, the workers could fetch a living wage and would not have to move to Storm Lake to cut pork for export to Mexico. It might not work out that way. It didn’t work out so well when tariffs and isolation helped lead to the Great Depression.

Iowa loves Trump. He carried the state three times easily. We knew we were voting for tariffs that are in fact a tax on consumption, like a sales tax. We were forewarned. Iowa voted strongly in favor of alienating our three biggest trading partners because we have a drug problem in the United States. Mexico has a cartel problem. China has a Communist problem. Canada? Well, what the hell, they deserve tariffs too just because. This is not a governing strategy. It’s definitely not a profitable business strategy. It is Trump being an entertainer.