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First there is a tariff, then there is no tariff, then there is, then not [1]
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Date: 2025-03-06
First, Donald was going to impose 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico. Then, he thought better of it, and delayed them for a month. Then he did negotiations and said he probably would not institute the tariffs. And then he changed his mind, and set the March 4th deadline for Canada and Mexico. And for one day, there were tariffs, until he said, wait a minute, no tariffs on cars coming from Canada and Mexico.
Just to lay the groundwork, Trump decided it was time to lay the blame for trade deficits on Sleepy Joe Biden.
Donald, you've been in office for almost 2 months now, and the trade deficit hasn't gotten any better, and you've found a way to destroy trade with tariffs. You must be really proud of yourself by now.
Sleepy Joe Biden! gets one exclamation point, but I will change that!!! gets three. Of course you will. But the change is that while cutting down on imports, you destroy the economy in the process. Just like everything you do, you don't think about the consequences.
Now it's time to take a swipe at Justin Trudeau.
Trump apparently hasn't been following the news in Canada. Justin Trudeau is not trying to run for Prime Minister again. He's stepping down when a new leader is chosen. Currently, elections are scheduled for October 25th, but they can be called earlier.
"So much fun to watch!"
He has the glee in putting other leaders and countries through the wringer. It's not a TV show, you ignorant imbecile. Trump is still holding onto the Canadian tariffs, except for cars. It's getting really hard to follow.
Then, he announces that he's going to abide by the USMCA agreement he brokered years ago, but just for Mexico.
Apparently, since Donald took over the Gulf, he feels better about the country.
But it's still just another one month delay. In the meantime, we're down 2,000 points in the stock market since February and we're another 500 points down this morning.
The agreement is until April 2nd, the same day that reciprocal tariffs and agricultural "external" tariffs go into effect. As he said in his Tuesday speech, he would have done it on April 1st, but he didn't want people to make a big deal about April Fool's Day.
The USMCA agreement is complicated with items containing percentages from USA, Canada and Mexico. Here's a fact sheet on it. It still doesn't tell you what you want to know. This gives you the volume of trade, but not the items. If you go to USTR.gov/usmca, you'll see it's an archived page, and going to the new page, you can't find anything at all about USMCA because the link at the bottom for USMCA takes you right back to the archived page. The White House Plan to Beat Covid-19 gives you an Error 404. You can still get to WTO and Free Trade Agreements, and USMCA is listed, and takes you right to the second link above. You might as well go to Wikipedia to read up on it. Say you wanted to look up clothing from Mexico, and the cotton came from the U.S., you'd have no idea.
Here's the actual text of the agreement, and each section is a separate PDF file. Great for a single document, but not for dozens of them.
Found a single PDF of the whole agreement. It's 1,889 pages. Yikes!
The best explanation is from Investopedia, sort of an USMCA for Dummies.
"Thank you to President Sheinbaum for your hard work and cooperation!"
The deal is still tentative unless Sheinbaum stops even more fentanyl and "illegal aliens" from crossing the border. I wish he would stop using "illegal aliens." The question is when is it enough?
Who the hell knows?
Is Trump actually trying to accomplish something here or is he just flexing his muscles? It would be a great time for Congress to pull out the immigration bill that was negotiated last year, that Trump had canned, because now it would be his idea.
Once again, we're living the tariff tango. But it's turning into the St. Vitus Dance.
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