The Trump tariff threat | The Manila Times

UNITED States President-elect Donald Trump, whose very existence is already unsettling enough, has rattled the entire world by reiterating the threat he repeatedly made during his campaign, to wit, that he would immediately impose high tariffs on many goods coming into the US. Trump, who was never very bright to begin with and is now hobbled by rapidly advancing dementia, apparently believes that tariffs are a kind of "tax" that would be paid to the US by exporting countries and would thus fund some of his other planned projects, such as deporting 20 million undocumented migrants and other non-US citizens. That is what he frequently told attendees at his many political rallies, at any rate, even after being called out by every economist on Earth for being completely wrong about tariffs work.

In a rant earlier this week, Trump announced that he would "on day one" of his presidency impose a blanket 25-percent tariff on all imports from Mexico and Canada and add 10 percent to the existing tariffs on goods from China. As of this writing (Nov. 29), neither China nor Canada has responded strongly to the announcement, but Mexico's new President Claudia Sheinbaum certainly did.