Washington apple farmers brace for impact after Mexico imposes tariffs on U.S. imports
Mexico slaps tariffs on U.S. products days after U.S.-imposed tariffs on Mexican products went into effect. Washington exports up to $250 million worth of apples every year, and Mexico is the biggest customer.
Washington’s apple growers are looking for new markets to make up for the expected loss of business after Mexico, their biggest export customer, imposed tariffs on purchases, a growers’ representative said.
Mexico announced Tuesday it will levy tariffs on imports of U.S. products. The order stipulates charges of 15 percent to 25 percent on U.S. farm goods including pork, cheese, apples and potatoes, bourbon whiskey and cranberries. The move follows a U.S. decision to impose tariffs on imports of Mexican steel and aluminum purchases, which took effect on Friday.
Washington exports apples valued at $200 million to $250 million to Mexico every year, representing 10 percent of its total market, Todd Fryhover, president of the Wenatchee-based Washington Apple Commission, said Tuesday morning. That makes it by far the biggest market for the state’s apples.
U.S. Steel Corp. x+0.27% said late Tuesday it plans to restart another blast furnace in Granite City, Illinois, and hire more workers. The steelmaker announced back in March that it was restarting its "B" blast furnace and hired 500 workers. The company plans to have the second furnace, the "A" furnace, back up by Oct. 1 and said it will hire 300 more workers. U.S. Steel said it expects full-year earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization hear the high end of its $1.7 billion to $1.8 billion range. Analysts surveyed by FactSet expect EBITDA of $1.74 billion. Shares of U.S. Steel rose 0.8% after hours, following a 1.1% decline to close at $36.86 in the regular session.
Donald Trump's tariffs hurt American workers and ruin relationships with our allies
Last week, President Trump imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum imported from Canada, Mexico and the European Union. He claims the move will strengthen national security.
He's dead wrong. The tariffs will weaken the United States, protect jobs in inefficient industries while preventing job growth in efficient ones, and harm relationships with our allies.
Why Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs on US allies are so dangerous
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross announced Thursday morning that hefty tariffs on aluminum and steel imports from the European Union, Mexico, and Canada will go into effect Thursday at midnight. Steel imports from those places will be taxed at 25 percent and aluminum imports at 10 percent. Those are huge numbers; the average tariff rate on US-EU traded goods is under 3 percent.
This is a big deal. The EU, Canada, and Mexico are (respectively) the United States’ first-, third-, and fourth-largest trading partners. While steel and aluminum tariffs alone aren’t the end of the world, a trade war — defined as the two sides getting locked in a cycle of retaliatory tariff increases — is.
A serious decline in trade between the US and these three partners would do immense damage to the US economy and create major consequences for the rest of the world. And even if we don’t get there, the tariffs do serious political damage to America’s relationship with its neighbors and most important European allies.
Tariffs may--I repeat, MAY--be temporarily beneficial for some industries but it's a chimera. With AI and robotics, manufacturing jobs are going to all but disappear. At some point in the future we're going to have to pay people NOT to work if we are to continue as a consumer-based economy. Basic income experiments are already being tried in Oakland, CA and Finland among many other places.
My BIL has been hard at work for the past several years building solar facilities in several states. This won't affect him too much because he's planning to retire soon, but it's bound to cause layoffs and will most likely halt some planned projects. Drumpf and his minions are laying waste to the landscape, both here and abroad.