Because they are.

No, not really. Trump's post indicates that they might change the tariffs into something that might actually work to contain China, but their original structure was completely unfit for that purpose.

Now the administration has to actually figure out what it is they want. Do they want to raise revenue? Do they want to near-eliminate trade deficits with countries like Vietnam? Do they want to contain China? Do they want to obtain trade concessions from all of our trading partners? Those are all different goals, and they are in many ways mutually inconsistent (a strategy for containing China doesn't involve hammering the EU and tariffing Vietnam and won't generate a lot of revenue, for example). I think the meeting with Netanyahu put all of this in stark relief. Netanyahu all but asked Trump to name his price to remove the tariffs....and Trump didn't have one. He doesn't know what he wants other than "goods trade deficit go to zero." There's no earthly reason related to China that we would have tariffs on Israel, for goodness sake.

US Policy FAQ

---

Contact Shrewd'm
Contact the developer of these message boards.