
Trump's Erratic Trade Policies Are Baffling Businesses, Threatening Investment And Economic Growth
HuffPost
Trump’s ever-changing, on-again, off-again tariff war is baffling businesses and causing them to delay or cancel the investments that help drive economic growth.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Marc Rosenberg, founder and CEO of The Edge Desk in Deerfield, Illinois is getting ready to introduce a fancy ergonomic chair designed to reduce customers’ back pain and boost their productivity. He figures the most expensive one will sell for more than $1,000. But he can’t settle on a price, and he is reluctantly reducing the shipment he’s bringing to the United States from China.
There’s a reason for his caution: President Donald Trump’s ever-changing, on-again, off-again tariff war with America’s three biggest trading partners – Mexico, Canada and China.
The latest reversal came Thursday. Two days after imposing 25% taxes — tariffs — on all imports from Canada and Mexico and threatening to detonate more than $1.3 billion in annual U.S. trade in North America, Trump announced that he was suspending many of the levies on Mexico and some of them on Canada for a month. This was an expansion of his Wednesday announcement when he exempted auto imports from both countries for 30 days, and it also comes after a previous monthlong tariff reprieve for Canada and Mexico right before they were to take effect Feb. 4.
“Trump is jerking around the entire continent of North America right now, it’s stupid and it has to stop,” Democratic Rep. Don Beyer of Virginia said. “Today there are businesses that don’t even know if the goods they trade in are subject to Trump’s tariffs. Everything Trump does on trade seems designed to maximize chaos and uncertainty.
Rosenberg and his ergonomic furniture, meanwhile, are contending with a 20% tariff on imports from China – which Trump on Tuesday raised from 10% ― but he’s not sure where the tariff will actually land.