{"id":369302,"date":"2018-07-14T01:22:57","date_gmt":"2018-07-14T00:22:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/shooting-ourselves-in-the-foot\/"},"modified":"2018-07-14T01:22:57","modified_gmt":"2018-07-14T00:22:57","slug":"shooting-ourselves-in-the-foot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/shooting-ourselves-in-the-foot\/","title":{"rendered":"Shooting Ourselves in the Foot"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Canadian government, lining the pockets of its dairy producers, imposes high tariffs on American dairy imports. That forces Canadians to pay higher prices for dairy products. For example, Canadians pay $5.24 for a 10.5-ounce block of cheddar. In Washington, D.C., that same amount of cheddar sells for $3.64. Canadians pay $3.99 for a 1-pound container of yogurt. In Washington, D.C., you can get nearly twice as much yogurt for a little over $4. It\u2019s clear that the Canadian government\u2019s tariffs screw its citizens by forcing them to pay higher prices for dairy products.<\/p>\n

What should the U.S. response be to Canada\u2019s screwing its citizens? If you were in the Trump administration, you might propose imposing tariffs on soft wood products that Americans import from Canada \u2014 in other words, retaliate against Canada by screwing American citizens. Canadian lumber \u2014 such as that from pine, spruce and fir trees \u2014 is used in U.S. homebuilding. Guess what tariffs on Canadian lumber do to home prices. If you answered that they raise the cost and American homebuyers are forced to pay higher prices, go to the head of the class.<\/p>\n

This retaliation policy is both cruel and not very smart. It\u2019s as if you and I were in a rowboat out at sea and I shot a hole in my end of the boat. What should be your response? If you were Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross or Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin, you might advise retaliating by shooting a hole in your end of the boat. If I were president, I\u2019d try to persuade officials of other countries not to serve special producer interests by forcing their citizens to pay higher prices. But if they insisted, I\u2019d say, \u201cGo ahead, but I\u2019ll be damned if I\u2019ll do the same to Americans!\u201d<\/p>\n


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The Canadian government, lining the pockets of its dairy producers, imposes high tariffs on American dairy imports. That forces Canadians to pay higher prices for dairy products. For example, Canadians pay $5.24 for a 10.5-ounce block of cheddar. In Washington, D.C., that same amount of cheddar sells for $3.64. Canadians pay $3.99 for a 1-pound […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-369302","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369302\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}