Here is the story regarding our tariff situation now,

Posted on: May 31, 2019 at 10:19:18 CT

from my class forum. It should explain it.



According to the US Trade Representative: the United States has free trade agreements in force with 20 countries. These are:

Australia
Bahrain
Canada
Chile
Colombia
Costa Rica
Dominican Republic
El Salvador
Guatemala
Honduras
Israel
Jordan
Korea
Mexico
Morocco
Nicaragua
Oman
Panama
Peru
Singapore

Note this list does not include any country in Europe, China, India or even Japan. All other trade is in accordance with a list of tariffs committed to the World Trade Organization. Here is where the problem is. The US has generally much lower tariffs than our trading partners. We agreed to these disadvantages after WWII because the US economy was so much stronger than other trading countries 50-60 years ago. Of course, Europe has fully recovered from WWII, as has Japan and S Korea. Then again other 3rd world countries are now vying for economic power status including China, India and Russia. With our higher labor and often regulatory costs, added to the tariff disadvantages the US manufacturing sector is suffering. Trump is trying to force other nations to surrender their tariff advantage, maybe even gain one for us. He is widely violating our WTO treaty obligation, but getting all the WTO countries to agree to either lower their tariffs or to accept higher matching US tariffs is virtually impossible. Presidents since the 1970s have accepted this tariff disadvantage. Trump wants to change it. Tough, especially with the Dems trying to get rid of him.