Donald Trump lies about the cost of tariffs! Americans will pay for them.

Echo opinion letter from Bradenton, Florida, published in the Bradenton Herald newspaper:

Don’t buy Donald Trump’s lies about tariffs. We are paying them!

Donald Trump did it again! He keeps saying, (ugh!) over and over again, that China will be paying these tariffs and the American people will not have to pay. There are many out there who believe this and have no understanding about how the tariff system works.

To be clear, tariffs are a tax that is added to the price of goods imported into the United States, from foreign countries. 

If you raise the tariff on a pair of shoes from 10% to 25%, the cost to the American importer goes up by the extra 15% on the landed price of the product. This he has to pay to the federal government to clear the products through customs. So, the cost of that pair of shoes to the wholesaler is now higher and they have two options. One, is to raise the price to account for the additional cost of the product and let the chips fall where they may in the market. 

Two, they can suck up this increase and lose the profits that they now have to pay the federal government. 

This will not secure their company’s future.

So, when Donald Trump stands there and tells the fabrication that China is paying the tariffs, he is lying, again. He’s playing the American people for a bunch of chumps. 

P. T. Barnum once said, “There is a sucker born every minute”. And, it seems like he was talking about those Americans who buy the lies that are spread by Trump. Tariffs are bad for American business and bad for our relations overseas. 

Moreover, the middle class will be burdened with Trump’s tariffs, just like they all “blessed” (cursed!) by his “tax cuts” (for the rich!) 

From Alan Holtzman, in Bradenton, Florida

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