Will Trump's Tariffs Trigger Another Recession?

Will Trump's Tariff's Trigger Another Recession?

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^^ Another indication that Trump and his cabinet don't communicate, before speaking to the press. :lol:

Lutnick: ‘There’s going to be no recession in America’​

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick shot down the possibility of a forthcoming recession in America, in an interview on NBC News’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday.
“Absolutely not,” Lutnick said when asked whether Americans should brace for a recession.

“Donald Trump is a winner. He’s going to win for the American people. That’s just the way it’s going to be,” Lutnick added.

NBC News’s Kristen Welker noted that consumer sentiment is dropping, inflation has ticked up, and major banks, like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs, say a recession in the next 12 months is becoming increasingly likely.

“There’s going to be no recession in America,” Lutnick said.

https://thehill.com/business/economy/5184668-commerce-sec-lutnick-no-recession-us/
 

Fact check: What Trump doesn’t mention about Canada’s dairy tariffs​

By Daniel Dale, CNN
Published 8:00 AM EDT, Mon March 10, 2025





A shopper pushes a cart past the dairy section at a grocery store in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, on February 2, 2025.

A shopper pushes a cart past the dairy section at a grocery store in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, on February 2, 2025.
Carlos Osorio/Reuters
WashingtonCNN —

President Donald Trump correctly noted Friday, as he has before, that Canada has tariffs above 200% on dairy products imported from the US. But Trump again failed to mention a critical fact. Those high tariffs kick in only after the US has hit a certain Trump-negotiated quantity of tariff-free dairy sales to Canada each year – and as the US dairy industry acknowledges, the US is not hitting its allowed zero-tariff maximum in any category of dairy product.
In many categories, notably including milk, the US is not even at half of the zero-tariff maximum.

“In practice, these tariffs are not actually paid by anyone,” Al Mussell, an expert on Canadian agricultural trade, said in an email Friday.

President Donald Trump delivers remarks in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on March 7.

Related articleTrump threatens new tariffs on Canada, including 250% tax on dairy
Trump also made a claim that is simply false. He told reporters Friday that the situation with Canadian dairy tariffs was “well taken care of” at the time his first presidency ended, “but under Biden, they just kept raising it.”

In reality, Canada did not raise its dairy tariffs under then-President Joe Biden, as official Canadian documents show and industry groups on both sides of the border confirmed to CNN. The tariffs Trump was denouncing Friday were left in place by the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, which Trump negotiated, signed in 2018 and has since touted as “the best trade deal ever made.”

The White House did not respond to CNN’s Friday request for comment. Trump vowed Friday to retaliate against Canada with new US dairy tariffs in the coming days, but Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Sunday on NBC that the president’s response to Canada on dairy will actually come on April 2, the day Trump has said he will impose reciprocal tariffs on countries around the world.

Trump’s USMCA left Canada’s high dairy tariffs in place​

Trump did achieve dairy concessions from Canada.

Canada has for decades irked US lawmakers with “supply management” policies that support Canadian farmers and protect its dairy, egg and poultry industries from foreign competition.

Under Trump’s USMCA, Canada guaranteed it wouldn’t apply any tariffs to specific amounts of US imports per year in 14 dairy categories, such as milk, cream, cheese, ice cream, butter and cream powder, and yogurt and buttermilk. These new US-specific quotas, which Canada agreed to increase over time, gave American farmers and companies more access to the Canadian market.

But the USMCA didn’t get Canada to lower the tariffs that apply to imports above the quota thresholds. And contrary to Trump’s Friday claim, those tariffs didn’t spike under Biden.

US President Donald Trump speaks during a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, DC, on February 26, 2025. (Photo by Jim WATSON / AFP) (Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)

Related articleFact check: Trump wildly exaggerates trade deficits with Canada, Mexico, China and the EU
Mussell, senior research fellow at the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute and research lead at Agri-Food Economic Systems, pointed CNN to Canada’s published tariff lists for 2025, 2020 (the last calendar year of Trump’s first term) and 2017 (the first calendar year of Trump’s first term, before the USMCA was in place). They show the dairy tariff levels were the same each year for imports above the zero-tariff maximums – for example, 298.5% for above-maximum butter and 245.5% for above-maximum cheddar cheese.

Those tariff levels are eye-popping, and they certainly function as major trade barriers above the zero-tariff quota maximums. (Mussell noted: “The US has precisely this same system for its dairy market. It has tariff-rate quotas, and beyond that volume, very stiff tariffs and almost no imports.”) But the International Dairy Foods Association, which represents the American dairy manufacturing and marketing industry, pointed out Friday that the US is not at Canada’s zero-tariff maximum in any category.

Becky Rasdall Vargas, the organization’s senior vice president of trade and workforce policy, argued in an interview that Canada is to blame for the inability of the US to get to the maximums, saying Canada is unfairly deploying obstacles that make it “harder and harder” for the US to sell into the Canadian market. She said that while “we don’t love the tariffs,” the primary issue is that “we can never even fill the quota to begin with” because Canada is using administrative tactics to deny the US the market access it is supposed to have under the USMCA.

We won’t try to adjudicate this complex debate, which the Biden administration and the Canadian government battled out at a USMCA dispute resolution panel. Regardless, Trump’s assertion that Canada kept hiking its dairy tariffs when Biden was in charge is just not true.

‘Almost all’ US agricultural exports to Canada face no tariffs​

Canada’s protectionism over its dairy, egg and poultry industries is an exception, not the norm.

The US Department of Agriculture notes on its website that under the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, which preceded Trump’s USMCA, “almost all” US agricultural exports to Canada, and vice versa, faced no tariffs or quotas. The USMCA kept in place that zero-tariff, zero-quota trade while securing greater US access to the smattering of Canadian markets that are governed by supply management.

And while Trump claimed in February that “they don’t take our agricultural product for the most part,” Canada is actually the world’s second-largest export market for US agricultural products as a whole, according to the US Department of Agriculture, purchasing about $28.4 billion worth in 2024.

Canada is also the second-largest US export market for dairy, purchasing about $1.1 billion worth in 2024. That figure has grown steadily over the past decade, from about $625.5 million in 2015.
 
Since more or less half of the US already seems delusional wrt to Trump, maybe there'll be 'irrational exuberance' in the economy that you'll only have to pay for in the future.
 
And they’re disbanding the people who do the gdp accounting and publication, said a headline I didn’t look into. But if true it just means they want recession but declare it fine.
 
Trump and his gremlins will attempt to change the definition of 'recession', if/when it materializes to make him look better. Sounds entirely plausible.

We should just call it Trumpcession, to make sure that the credit goes where it belongs. ;)
 
Hygro said:
And they’re disbanding the people who do the gdp accounting and publication, said a headline I didn’t look into. But if true it just means they want recession but declare it fine.
Click to expand...
Yes they have said they are getting rid of the office that does the economic analysis and they want to reformulate how to calculate GDP to avoid any talk of a recession.
 
EvaDK said:
Trump and his gremlins will attempt to change the definition of 'recession', if/when it materializes to make him look better. Sounds entirely plausible.

We should just call it Trumpcession, to make sure that the credit goes where it belongs. ;)
Click to expand...
As they project, they said Biden was doing this when the Covid spending drop happened. So that’s the clue they will and the license with which they justify it to their more principled followers.

Birdjaguar said:
Yes they have said they are getting rid of the office that does the economic analysis and they want to reformulate how to calculate GDP to avoid any talk of a recession.
Click to expand...
The irony is that by dropping “G” in the equation you just make C + I + NX more important. Recessions are basically a drop in Investment and corresponding consumption as a result, so if a drop in G (government spending) causes the recession it will show up as drops in C and I.
 
Hygro said:
As they project, they said Biden was doing this when the Covid spending drop happened. So that’s the clue they will and the license with which they justify it to their more principled followers.
Click to expand...

The MAGAs may buy it, as they have demonstrated little capacity for critical independent thinking.

Moderate Republicans will not.
 

Ontario slaps 25% levy on U.S.-bound electricity in latest trade war volley​

Surcharge will generate up to $400K per day to be used for worker, business supports: province​

Ontario is imposing a 25 per cent surcharge on all U.S.-bound electricity as part of its retaliatory measures against U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs on Canadian goods.

The new levy took effect Monday and will add about $10 per megawatt-hour to the cost of power heading south, the province says. It will generate an estimated $300,000 to $400,000 per day, money that will be used to support workers and businesses hit by U.S. tariffs.

"Believe me when I say I do not want to do this," Ontario Premier Doug Ford said at a news conference Monday.

"I feel terrible for the American people, because it's not the American people who started this trade war. It's one person who's responsible, that's President Trump," he said.

Ontario provides electricity to roughly 1.5 million customers in the northern border states of New York, Michigan and Minnesota. Ford said the surcharge will cost the average household or business in these states an additional $100 per month on their power bills.

He added the magnitude of the levy could be increased if the Trump administration continues to escalate its trade war against Canada.

"Until these tariffs are off the table, until these tariffs are gone for good, Ontario will not relent. We will not back down," Ford said alongside Ontario Energy Minister Stephen Lecce.


The province has also taken American booze off LCBO shelves and banned U.S. companies from government procurement contracts, in addition to the federal government's initial round of retaliatory tariffs on $30 billion worth of U.S. goods.

The electricity surcharge is being imposed by a directive from Lecce to the province's electricity system operator, which will require any generator selling electricity to the U.S. to add what's being called a Tariff Response Charge.

The system operator will then collect the money generated by the surcharge on behalf of the government on a monthly basis.

Last week, Trump temporarily paused implementation of 25 per cent tariffs on Canadians exports "compliant" with the terms of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) until April 2. But both Ford and Ottawa have said retaliatory measures will move ahead until the tariffs are lifted.

"Pausing some tariffs, making last-minute exemptions — it will not cut it. We need to end the chaos once and for all," Ford said Monday.

He also reiterated his previous threat to stop flows of electricity from Ontario to the U.S. altogether if the trade war lingers on.

Asked about a specific threshold that may compel him to take that step, Ford declined to be specific.

"If necessary, if the United States escalates, I will not hesitate to cut the electricity off completely," Ford said. "Let's just see how this rolls out. [Trump] changes his mind almost every single day."

Ford urged other provinces — in particular Alberta, which sends more than four million barrels of oil per day south of the border — to look at similar moves.

"A message to Premier (Danielle) Smith: one day, I think you might have to use that trump card and give approval for an export tax," he said.

"You want to talk about a trump card? That will instantly change the game, instantly, when the Americans — and I know the Americans — all of a sudden their gas prices go up 90 (cents) to $1 a gallon, they will lose their minds. So we need to at least put that in the window."

Smith has said Alberta needs to take action, but she won't curtail or impose counter-tariffs on oil and gas shipments. Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe, who leads a province that exports vital uranium and potash to the U.S., has similarly expressed a reluctance to impose export tariffs.

Ontario won't need to buy U.S. electricity this summer: Lecce​

During the news conference, Lecce noted that most of the year, Ontario sells many times more electricity from the U.S. than it purchases.

Depending on energy demands in New York, Michigan and Minnesota, those states will sometimes then re-sell surplus electricity that originated in Ontario to other states, particularly along the I-95 corridor down the eastern seaboard.

When Ontario does buy U.S.-generated electricity, it is most often in the peak summer months.

Asked if Ontario could face reciprocal surcharges come the warmer season, Lecce said the province's electricity system operator is "fully confident in its ability to keep the lights on" with power generated in Ontario and Quebec.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-electricity-tariffs-ford-trump-1.7479180
 
Will be amazing if US begins a trade war with Canada and then lose it. USA may still be the greatest country in the world, but Trump and his minions are eating away at that legacy rather quickly.
 
EvaDK said:
Moderate Republicans will not.
Click to expand...

I like how we are still doing this about four years after we all should have realized there are no moderate Republicans. All the genuinely moderate Republicans became Democrats at some point in the last 8 years.

Thorgalaeg said:
USA may still be the greatest country in the world
Click to expand...

"Great meaning large or immense, we use it in the pejorative sense!"
 
No, I mean it in a positive sense. There is a dark side, too, like in everything, but IMO the good outweighs the bad (for now).

 
Trump's new head of the EPA promised "...to drive a dagger through the heart of the climate change religion...."


EPA moves to dismantle dozens of Biden’s environmental rules​

The agency announced Wednesday that it will begin the process of dismantling dozens of Biden-era rules for electric vehicles, power plants, clean water and more.
March 12, 2025 at 5:41 p.m. EDTtoday at 5:41 p.m. EDT
By Maxine Joselow


The Environmental Protection Agency announced Wednesday that it will begin the process of dismantling dozens of Biden-era rules touching issues as varied as electric vehicles, coal plants and clean water.

Ask your climate questions. With the help of generative Al, we'll try to deliver answers based on our published reporting.

In a flurry of news releases, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said the agency will roll back some of President Joe Biden’s most consequential climate and environmental regulations. He specifically cited rules aimed at speeding the nation’s shift to electric vehicles, slashing planet-warming emissions from power plants and safeguarding waterways from harmful pollution.

Taken together, the announcements herald a seismic shift in U.S. environmental policy, one that could ease restrictions on nearly every sector of the economy. Yet rewriting many of the rules could take the agency months or even years. “Today is the most consequential day of deregulation in American history,” Zeldin wrote in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday. “… We are driving a dagger through the heart of climate-change religion and ushering in America’s Golden Age.”

Zeldin confirmed in the piece that the Trump administration will repeal a scientific finding underpinning much of the federal government’s push to combat climate change. The Washington Post first reported last month that the administration would target the “endangerment finding,” which cleared the way for regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act by concluding that the planet-warming gases pose a threat to public health and welfare.

Environmentalists criticized the EPA’s actions Wednesday. “Corporate polluters are celebrating today because Trump’s EPA just handed them a free pass to spew unlimited climate pollution, consequences be damned,” Charles Harper, the power sector senior policy lead at the climate advocacy group Evergreen Action, said in a statement.

Business groups cheered the moves. “President Donald Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin have answered the calls of manufacturers across the country to rebalance and reconsider burdensome federal regulations harming America’s ability to compete,” Jay Timmons, president and CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers, said in a statement. Coal advocates have long complained about the power plant rules, which would have pushed all coal plants by 2039 to either capture their carbon dioxide emissions or shut down.

“The standard is so extreme that it’s virtually impossible to comply with,” Ernie Thrasher, CEO of the coal supplier XCoal Energy and Resources, said of rules affecting the coal industry in an interview Tuesday. “It’s the consumers who have been strangled with regulation.”

Battles over clean water rules​

Zeldin kicked off the announcements with an event at the EPA’s headquarters Wednesday morning, where he said the agency will narrow the definition of U.S. waterways — including wetlands, rivers and streams — that receive federal protections under the Clean Water Act. The Biden administration had expanded the scope of the Clean Water Act, passed in 1972 to protect all “waters of the United States” from pollutants including livestock waste, construction runoff and industrial effluent.

Environmental groups have argued that a broad definition of “waters of the United States” is crucial to restoring the health of degraded waterways and wildlife habitats across the country. But business groups have long complained that legal confusion over the definition has created regulatory chaos for landowners, farmers, ranchers and home builders.
Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-California) said at the event that the Biden and Obama administrations caused regulatory headaches for farmers and ranchers with even tiny waterways on their properties.
“It’s not every mud puddle that they should regulate,” LaMalfa said. “If you can float a rubber duck in it for a half-hour after the rain, that does not mean this is something they can regulate.”

Zeldin said the EPA will work with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which also regulates the discharge of dredged materials into protected waterways, to solicit public input and craft a new regulation.

The Supreme Court in 2023 weakened the EPA’s power to enforce the Clean Water Act. The court’s conservative majority ruled that the law “extends to only those wetlands with a continuous surface connection to bodies that are ‘waters of the United States’ in their own right” — a definition that environmentalists said would remove millions of acres of waterways from federal oversight. The definition of “waters of the United States,” or WOTUS, has sparked fierce legal and political battles for more than a decade.

In 2015, the Obama administration widened the law’s scope to cover even ephemeral streams that flow only after it rains. North Dakota, Wyoming and other states challenged the rule in court, leading a federal judge to pause its implementation.
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During President Donald Trump’s first term, the EPA repealed the Obama-era rule and in 2019 created a new, weaker one. The Biden administration then tried to strike a balance in 2023 by undoing the Trump-era rule and redefining the law’s scope as “traditional navigable waters,” including interstate waterways.
Andrew Wetzler, senior vice president of the nature program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, criticized the change announced Wednesday.

“Trump’s EPA is moving to radically restrict protections for our waterways and wetlands,” Wetzler said in a statement. “With this change, EPA is doing the bidding of polluters — taking an extreme approach that will leave communities across the country vulnerable to more pollution, flooding and environmental harm.”

Zippy Duvall, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, a powerful farm group, praised the move, which comes as many farmers face uncertainty because of Trump’s tariffs and trade decisions.
“This is a first big step in a very difficult farm economy that gives farmers and ranchers hope — hope that good things are going to happen in the future,” he said.

 
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