Winning the tariff war
Ford and GM praise Trump doing for them what Reagan did for Harley-Davidson
It’s happening. President Trump’s tariffs are taking hold and the attitude of Be American, Buy American is returning.
Breitbart reported, “Executives at Ford Motor Company are praising President Donald Trump’s expanded auto tariffs, saying such duties will ensure that manufacturing in the United States is no longer a disadvantage for American companies.”
The story went on to say:
In a recent earnings call, Ford CEO Jim Farley thanked Trump for the newly announced tariffs on foreign cars and car parts.
“I’d like to thank President Trump and his team for the recent tariff policy developments, which are favorable to Ford as the most American auto manufacturer,” Farley said:
“In addition, tariffs leveling the playing field for those imported medium and heavy-duty trucks is a positive for Ford because we are no longer disadvantaged for building every single one of our super duty trucks here in the United States.”
Likewise, Ford placed an ad campaign in several newspapers backing Trump’s tariffs and vowing to continue building their cars in the United States.
Ford is not the only American company singing Trump’s praises.
GM has directed several thousand of its suppliers to scrub their supply chains of parts from [Red] China, four people familiar with the matter said, reflecting automakers’ growing frustration over geopolitical disruptions to their operations.
GM executives have been telling suppliers they should find alternatives to [Red] China for their raw materials and parts, with the goal of eventually moving their supply chains out of the country entirely, the people said.
The automaker has set a 2027 deadline for some suppliers to dissolve their [Red] China sourcing ties, some of the sources said.
GM approached some suppliers with the directive in late 2024, but the effort took on fresh urgency this past spring, during the early days of an escalating US-[Red] China trade battle, the sources said.
It’s official. I no longer want a Bentley. BBC’s anti-American propaganda and its attempt to interfere with last year’s election in America was the last straw.
However, I may trade in the 15-year-old Red Head for a new Mustang convertible. Do they come in 12-cylinder yet?
A Tesla is tempting because its self-driving will make my autumn years safer for everyone. I’m 72 so I have a good 20 years of driving left, but I have to consider a time when I will not be able to do donuts on a snow-covered parking lot. Sigh.
Plus, living in West Virginia means the Cybertruck would run on coal.
The toucans on television squawk tariffs are a tax:
In a case where Chief Justice John Roberts stares down a president’s signature agenda item, the decisions can hinge on what Roberts sees as a tax.
That’s what happened with the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, when Roberts shocked conservatives and Republicans by upholding the law and its since-repealed requirement that people must pay a fine, or a tax, if they did not buy health insurance.
Now Roberts is faced with Trump’s tariffs, which are obviously a tax, but which the president says are a tool.
But tariffs are not a tax. They are a choice. You can Be American and Buy American and avoid the tariff—or you can help Red China’s economy. Chairman Xi can then decide how much if any of the tariffs importers pay will be passed along to consumers.
The fate of Trump’s tariffs is in the hands of the Supreme Court, which must decide whether it can veto any and all acts of President Trump. Justices heard oral arguments last week.
CNN’s Chief Supreme Court Analyst Joan Biskupic said:
Roberts said plenty during the Q and A suggesting he does view tariffs as a tax. But that isn’t the end of things. As he said at one point: So the tariffs are a tax and that’s a core power of Congress. But they are, and I’m going to quote him, “a foreign-facing tax.” And he went on to tell the lawyer for the challengers, “Foreign affairs is a core power of the executive. And I don’t think you can dismiss the consequences.”
So being able to label these tariffs as a kind of tax doesn’t mean they will definitely be struck down. During the Q and A, there was also some question of whether the tariffs could be compared to licenses, which could have more regulatory breadth than a pure income-generating tax.
What would Reagan do? Save Harley-Davidson.
That link is to a 2018 column in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, “Reagan used tariffs, not tweets, to protect Harley-Davidson from foreign competition.”
Yes, dear readers, actually newspapers voted for the tariffs before they voted against them. The column said:
Thirty-five years ago, President Ronald Reagan took bold steps to protect a storied U.S. manufacturing company from foreign competitors.
In 1983, Reagan ordered massive tariffs on large Japanese motorcycles to help the last surviving maker of American-made motorcycles:
Harley-Davidson Motor Co. of Milwaukee.
“The president’s courageous action demonstrates his support for the concept that free trade must also be fair trade,” a delighted Vaughn H. Beals, Harley’s chairman, said at a downtown news conference after Reagan’s action.
Harley-Davidson is now on the other side of a tariff tangle.
Today it finds itself on the receiving end of a barrage of furious tweets from President Donald Trump, angry at the company’s decision to move some production overseas.
Harley officials say they are moving production of bikes destined for the growing European Union market to the company’s international factories to avoid 31% tariffs—a response by the EU to import duties imposed by the U.S. on steel and aluminum made in Europe and other countries.
Harley is opening a plant in Thailand this year and has assembly plants in India and Brazil.
Reagan imposed a protective tariff just as every Republican president before him.
President Trump is not protecting just one American company. He is protecting them all. Ford and GM thanked him for paying attention to this matter.
Poll: I might have chosen "pay down debt" if I thought Congress would begin to act the slightest bit responsible. Congress would take the money, and in a showy blitz, pretend to apply it to the national debt only to turn around 24 hours later and let NGOs waste our money. NGOs are the "outsourced spending operation" that Congress is too lazy to manage themselves.
Our Congress has eroded well below the point that Article V was written to change/control.
“The fate of Trump’s tariffs is in the hands of the Supreme Court,” So the SCOTUS will decide that the President of the USA is actually not in charge of foreign or domestic policy since tariffs are being used by DJT for those purposes. Recall that it was the SCOTUS with their 5 eminent “scientists” who decided that CO2 was a pollutant and essentially led to the spending of billions on the climate scam. It was also the SCOTUS that “saved” Obamacare, res ipsa loquitur!