Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
The Trump tariffs hurt the poor, increase unemployment, and will cost you $915 a year
The Trump tariffs hurt the poor, increase unemployment, and will cost you $915 a year
Sep 23, 2024 5:12 AM

Would you like the federal government to implement a policy that would reduce GDP, increase unemployment, benefit almost every country in the world except for the U.S., and cost you $915 a year? If so, you’re in luck! Those are just some of the impacts of current and proposed US trade actions under Section 232 and 301 of US trade law, aka, the Trump tariffs.

A new missioned by Koch Industries and conducted by consulting firm ImpactECON, looked at the potential cumulative impact of tariffs. Here are some of the effects we can look forward to:

• In 2019, households suffer losses equivalent to $2,357 per household (or $915 per person) in 2017 dollars.

• Gross domestic product (GDP) would be reduced by a projected -1.78 percent in 2019 (or $365.1 billion in 2017 dollars), and GDP losses are projected to cumulate to a discounted value of $2.8 trillion between 2018 and 2030.

• All countries, except the US and China, gain from US trade actions and responses and increase GDP.

• In 2019, an estimated 2.75 million workers are likely to e unemployed if all trade actions are implemented concurrently. A high proportion of these job losses affect agricultural and low-skilled workers.

• In addition to those unemployed, 665,000 workers are expected to be displaced in 2019 and must find employment in new industries. By 2030, 1.07 million workers will be employed in a different sector because of the trade actions.

Next year the Trump tariffs are expected to cost Americans $915 each—or $2,400 per household—in the form of higher prices, lower wages and lower investment. They could also wipe out more jobs than were created in 2017 (2.1 million).

If a foreign country were to cause us such substantial economic losses we would consider it an act of war. We would never tolerate such an action, especially when it harms American’s most vulnerable, the poor and low-skilled workers. Why then are we not outraged when our own government does it?

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
How Property Rights Saved the Pilgrims
This week school children across the country will be hearing the tale of the Pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving. You probably heard a similar story when you were in a kid that went something like this: The Pilgrims sailed over to America from Plymouth, England on the Mayflower. During their first winter in the new country many of them starved because they were unable to produce enough food. In the spring, though, a Native America tribe taught the Pilgrims how...
Ruggles in America: Charles Laughton Recites the Gettsyburg Address
Today marks the 152nd anniversary of the Gettsyburg Address, the speech given by Abraham Lincoln after the battle which left 7,000 American soldiers dead and 40,000 wounded. Given its power and permanence, it may seem strange to memorialize it by pointing to an edy film from the 1930s. But it’s one that stirs all the right sentiments. In Ruggles of Red Gap, the great Charles Laughton plays Marmaduke Ruggles, an English manservant who has been gambled away by his master...
Remembering Austin Hill
The Acton Institute lost a great friend last week. Austin HillI first met Austin Hill at 1997 an Acton Institute, Towards a Free and Virtuous Society conference held in Connecticut. Those conferences were designed to identify young future religious leaders with great potential. We invested well with Austin, who came to numerous of our events over the years. He would a radio host, author and public speaker and was most recently producing “Austin Hill’s Big World of Small Business,” a...
The ‘Illiberal’ Religious Campaigners Behind Fossil-Fuel Divestment
The recent decline in oil prices is a boon for consumers but a bust for panies. Collectively, profits of the four supermajors – Royal Dutch Shell PLC; Exxon Mobil Corp.; Chevron Corp.; and BP PLC – have plummeted 70 percent in the first nine months of 2015, according to the Wall Street Journal. Despite a “precipitous drop in profits this year,” the supermajors increased stock dividends 10 percent over 2014, disbursing approximately $28 billion to shareholders. For the time being,...
Is this the end of Europe?
Writing for Public Discourse, Samuel Gregg has some rather negative predictions about the European Union in a new piece titled, “The end of Europe.” Gregg begins by quoting France’s leader during World War II, General Charles de Gaulle. In his Mémoires d’Espoir, de Gaulle saw Europe as having “a spiritual and cultural heritage.” He wrote that “the same Christian origins and the same way of life, linked to one another since time immemorial by countless ties of thought, art, science,...
Acton and Burke: For The Conservative Wisdom of History and Tradition
“It was the genius of the English political system to adhere to the facts of English history,” says Gertrude Himmelfarb in this week’s Acton Commentary. What Lord Acton particularly admired in the later Edmund Burke was his empirical philosophy of politics, his refusal to give way to the metaphysical abstractions, the a priori speculations, that had been insinuated into public life by the rationalists of the French Revolution. Facts, Burke had admonished, are a severe taskmaster. They prohibit the idle...
How Does Your State Rank For Integrity?
When Americans think of corruption, we tend to think of third world countries where getting anything done often requires bribing local government officials. We tend not to have such problems here; our corruption is more subtle and sophisticated, and often involves state level lawmakers. For instance, over the past few years there have seen corruption-related charges or convictions of the house or assembly speakers ofAlabama (bribery, misuse of campaign funds),Rhode Island (bribery, misuse of campaign funds),South Carolina (misuse of campaign...
How Basic Economics Reveals the Connection Between Legalized Prostitution and Sex Trafficking
Reality has no shortage of enemies. In America alone there are millions of people who will throw mon sense, empiricism, and established economic principles when it conflicts with their pet political ideology. Oftentimes the best we can hope for is that the reality-denying does not tip over into outright advocacy of evil. Unfortunately, that is exactly what has happened at a one of my favorite online publications. Since its inception, The Federalist has been churning out a steady supply of...
How Access to Cars Helps the Poor
One of the most important socio-economic factors in America is social mobility, the ability of an individual or family to improve (or lower) their economic status. And one of the major factors in increasing social mobility is to simply increase mobility. For example, if you have to walk to work, you are limited to jobs within a few miles of your home. But if you can drive to work, the number of job opportunities available to you may increase considerably....
Video: Bradley J. Birzer on Russell Kirk – American Conservative
On November 5th, 2015, the Acton Institute was pleased to host Dr. Bradley J. Birzer for a lunch lecture and book launch celebration for the release of his latest book, Russell Kirk: American Conservative. Russell Kirk has long been known as perhaps the most important founding father of the American Conservative movement in the second half of the 20th century. In the early 1950s, America was emerging from two decades of the Great Depression and the New Deal and facing...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2024 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved