A.F. Branco with another brilliant cartoon that perfectly explains Trump’s stand with our G-7 allies on trade:
That’s just about the best explanation out there… but if you want more, here it is:
The Federalist Papers report,
President Trump’s participation in the G7 conference in Canada focused on trade. Once again, he made it clear that he wants our trading partners’ tariffs and other barriers to U.S. imports to come down. This gave the American press the vapors, but why? Our president certainly should try to reduce obstacles to sales of American goods.
President Trump gave a press conference this morning in which he expressed his belief in free trade:
Q Mr. President, you said that this was a positive meeting, but from the outside, it seemed quite contentious. Did you get any indication from your interlocutors that they were going to make any concessions to you? And I believe that you raised the idea of a tariff-free G7. Is that —
THE PRESIDENT: I did. Oh, I did. That’s the way it should be. No tariffs, no barriers. That’s the way it should be.
Q How did it go down?
THE PRESIDENT: And no subsidies. I even said no tariffs. In other words, let’s say Canada — where we have tremendous tariffs — the United States pays tremendous tariffs on dairy. As an example, 270 percent. Nobody knows that. We pay nothing. …
We have to — ultimately, that’s what you want. You want a tariff-free, you want no barriers, and you want no subsidies, because you have some cases where countries are subsidizing industries, and that’s not fair. So you go tariff-free, you go barrier-free, you go subsidy-free. That’s the way you learned at the Wharton School of Finance. I mean, that would be the ultimate thing. Now, whether or not that works — but I did suggest it, and people were — I guess, they got to go back to the drawing and check it out, right?
But we can’t have — an example — where we’re paying — the United States is paying 270 percent. Just can’t have it. And when they send things into us, you don’t have that.
Trump is right that most countries protect their agricultural industries with tariff and non-tariff barriers. (The EU’s ban on GMO crops is an example of a non-tariff barrier that is rational only as an act of protectionism.) The U.S. has the most efficient agricultural sector in the world, and since most countries can’t compete with our farmers, they erect trade barriers. How is this any different from our imposing tariffs on steel or automobiles? It isn’t.
This is EXACTLY why Trump was elected.
To shake things up and put the interests of the American people before the interests of any other nation.
More at The Federalist Papers
