It’s not going to work. The objective of Tariffs. I spend a lot of time listening to financial advisors and economists. The optimistic ones are saying that sure, short term, Trump’s actions are going to cause pain, but long term, they will lead to a stronger domestic manufacturing United States.
I wonder where they are living.
Our paper and paper products come from Canada. IN 2023, the US imported $13.6 billion Canadian dollars worth of pulp and paper products*.
Mexico supplies 69% of U.S. vegetable imports and 51% of U.S. fresh fruit**.
Imagine that everything you buy is going up a minimum of 25%. A minimum.
I don’t know about you but I don’t have that in my budget.
The bribery stimulus check will help for a couple of months, but what then?
Let’s look at producing those items in the U.S. Correct me if I’m wrong but trees take a while to grow. And sure we get a lot of produce from California, but Trump is sending home all the Hispanics that have picked it for us.
Let’s focus on other items. Who is going to build those manufacturing plants? If I had those deep pockets, I would be hesitant because in four more years, most likely a Democrat will be elected, the tariffs will be gone and your plant that you have sunk millions into, will no longer be viable.
Let’s say though that you manage to build that manufacturing plant (with items you most likely need to purchase from China and other countries).
Who is going to work there?
While Trump is off playing golf at Mar Lago and hosting million dollar parties, he may not have noticed that the rest of us are in crisis mode.
Everything. Everything. Everything. Has already gone up.
Except our salaries.
The healthcare industry doesn’t work. 26 million of us do not even have health insurance. I know as I went almost three years without it. When I finally got it, I went to a doctor’s visit and was hit in the face with a $300 bill to get lab work. Jesus, I thought. What if I was actually sick?
I stopped going to the doctor. Can’t afford it and their answer is always drugs or surgeries anyhow. There are other answers, but I realized a long time ago that we must find them for ourselves.
The housing market is in crisis as well. My parents bought a lovely home for what my dad made in a year $50,000. That home is now worth almost half a million.
How many of us can buy a lovely home for what we make in a year?
And will it go up ten times its value?
Nope.
Most of us can no longer afford to even buy a home. So we pay exorbitant non-sustainable rents. Where will we live when we can no longer earn the rent money?
And I don’t know, Mr. Trump if you’ve taken a look around at our young men. They’re unemployed. Driving for Uber. Delivering food for Door Dash. Depressed and living at their parents addicted to video games.
Immobilized by fear from all the worst case scenarios they daily see on their phones. Figuring out how to live off grid.
They’ve figured out the worthlessness of working 80 hours a week for someone else for what? Debt? They cannot support a family on salaries of $20/hour. They cannot feel like the Men that they are.
In hopelessness, they’re killing themselves. Literally and figuratively with Meth addictions, in stupors from daily cannabis use, alcohol, cocaine. ‘Failure to thrive’ generation. And we’re not talking about infants. We’re talking about people who have just given up on Life making sense.
These problems cannot be solved with Tariffs.
These problems can only be solved by realizing we are a Global Economy depending on and needing each other.
‘For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.’ On Children by Kahlil Gibran.
Trump is trying to build a world based on the old rules that no longer apply. It will not work. Buckle up. We are in for a really bumpy ride.
