The Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) preliminary report on the impact of tariffs on the U.S. economy forecasts large benefits to the federal budget from tariffs and a tiny consumer price increase, confirming recent forecasts published by the Coalition for a Prosperous America.
A mostly Democratic Party panel of members of the Joint Economic Committee (JEC) held a hearing on tariffs on Wednesday, where the room was heavily weighted against incoming president Trump’s 10% (or 20%) universal tariff proposal.
Mexico has been flooding the United States with underpriced steel — in clear violation of a 2019 agreement with Washington. The Biden administration did not address the problem; now, the coming Trump administration must act.
While the bill’s title suggests a crackdown on the unfolding de minimis catastrophe, in reality it would handcuff CBP’s ability to do anything about it.
Biden’s signature climate change-related spending policy, the Inflation Reduction Act, is said to be going under the knife once Trump takes office in January. But with Republican districts now full of solar, and solar manufacturing facilities, the real risk is changes to the so-called 45X tax credit.
The takeaway from the roughly 90 minute hearing titled “Rebuilding the Arsenal of Democracy” was that the government needed long term contracts and more money to build up defense systems because, based on war games conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the U.S. struggled to hold its own.
President-elect Donald Trump read Mexico and Canada the riot act on Monday night, telling them if they don’t seal their border and – in Mexico’s case – drastically slow the flow of fentanyl and other narcotics into the U.S., they’ll be hit with 25% tariffs starting January 20, 2025.
Now that we have re-elected President Trump for a second term to work on achieving his goal of Making America Great Again, it’s time to focus on how to rebuild America’s manufacturing industry because we can’t be great again without a strong domestic manufacturing industry.
For Mr. Lutnick to lead the tariff and trade agenda in the next Administration, he will need an aligned Treasury Secretary to executive critical policies on customs revenue generation, customs valuation, and de minimis.
Either we have a fashion industry or we have de minimis, but we cannot have both, warned Jacob Helberg, one of the 10 commissioners for the U.S. China Economic and Security Review Commission.
