Here’s What Happened When Obama Tried Trump’s Tariff Tactics To Punish China!

One of Trump’s biggest promises is that he would punish China with a YUGE tariff because they’re just killing us, he says.

You might not believe who the last U.S. President to try to slap a tariff on China – it was Barack Obama!!

Here’s what happened:

By 2009, the United States was importing tires from China at a rate of about 50 million per year. The United Steel, Paper and Forestry, Rubber, Manufacturing, Energy, Allied Industrial, and Service Workers International Union complained to the Obama administration that there was a “large, rapid, and continuing” increase in the number of Chinese-made tires entering American markets. In September of that year, Obama approved relief for domestic producers by increasing tariffs on most new tire imports for three years.

Weird how it was UNIONS who were demanding tariffs, but Trump says this is a conservative measure. I guess unions are conservative in Trumpmerica!

Anyway, it DID actually create jobs – just a few:

Economists Gary Clyde Hufbauer and Sean Lowry note that the number of Americans employed in tire manufacturing increased from 50,800 in September 2009 to 52,000 in September 2011. If all 1,200 jobs were attributed to the tariff — an exceedingly generous assumption — they calculate that Obama’s move could be credited with saving or creating $48 million of additional worker income and purchasing power.

But here’s what it cost the consumer, and American companies:

…the tariff also forced consumers to spend $1.1 billion more on tires than they otherwise would have — or roughly $900,000 per U.S. tire industry job created. And retaliatory tariffs imposed by the Chinese further hurt our economy. In early 2010, China’s Ministry of Commerce imposed tariffs ranging from 50.3 to 105.4 percent on American poultry imports, which “reduced exports by $1 billion as U.S. poultry firms experienced a 90 percent collapse in their exports of chicken parts to China,” according to Hufbauer and Lowry.

Now this is just what happened when Obama slapped a tariff on ONE product China sends to us. Trump wants to put tariffs on EVERY SINGLE PRODUCT from China. AND he wants to put tariffs on Mexico too!

This is why many say his plans sound great to the U.S. worker, but would actually be terrible for most Americans. But then, sometimes bad ideas sound really great when you’re low on details.

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