America First

America First should not mean America only. Do we want to be an isolationist country like we were under President Wilson? We are tied to a WTO (World Trade Organization) that consists of trade throughout the world. The WTO began in January 1995, but the GATT began in 1948 (General Association of Trade and Tariffs). The WTO and its agreements now also cover trade in services, intellectual property, inventions, designs, and AI.

In trying to understand Tariffs and Free Trade, I look at the WTO as a kind of overseer for countries to compete on a level playing field like the UN (United Nations). Created with Good intentions but having improbable results and questionable actions.

As a company trying to make a product or sell a service, they look for the best price/quality for the money.

Companies, today, in order to expand must basically sell their goods or services overseas….Coca Cola, McDonalds, KFC, Pepsi and so many others. This is true of countries also.  America wants to produce high quality fair priced goods to sell not only to its citizens but to other countries as well. When this comes to higher priced items like automobiles, other countries with lower labor costs want to make American cars and then sell them back to us (as or China EV’s made in Mexico). This affects the American auto industry and creates more unemployment in our manufacturing sector.

Former President Trump has decried Mexico, as an example for wanting to manufacture US cars and sell back to the US. He says he will put a tariff on each car of some 100-200% and more so that they basically cannot market to America. He is offering lower tax rates to keep manufacturing in America. Will this work?

I don’t know, but in negotiations, my experience says that both parties should win, not just one side wins and one side loses. The US trade deficit in 2024 was $70.4 billion which means we imported that much more than we exported.

A lot of countries make products much cheaper than the US i.e. Canada with drugs, etc. We want to have good relationships with our neighboring countries of Mexico and Canada, especially, but others as well.

This can only be reflected in fair dealings with every country and demanding the same from them.

Tariffs may be necessary in some cases, but I don’t think extremely high tariffs are the answer.