Smoke And Mirrors Part One

The Chinese have reciprocated with donnie’s 25% tariff.

One of the exports most vulnerable to the adverse effect of tariffs on American exports is farm stuff.

Chinese agribusiness companies are unlikely to want to see a 25% increase in the cost of the stuff they sell; you know, like chicken feet and pig snouts and the occasional whole chicken or pork chop. 

The reason for this is that those companies would need to pass on the 25% to its customers; and they would need to pass the 25% on to Chinese consumers.

And that is a tough sell.

Especially since the Chinese agribusiness industry doesn’t need to buy from American farmers.

They can buy from European farmers, just as an example of an alternative.

So donnie has just really screwed American Farmers.

But he has a plan (remember that WKRP Thanksgiving episode)?

He’s going to use the tariffs that the government is levying on Chinese imports – you know, all that stuff that Americans buy at Walmart – (which, incidentally will be 25% more expensive) to buy pigs and chickens etc. from American Farmers and – I am not really clear on how he plans to get those items into the American grocery system as wings, legs and porkchops, maybe he’s going to turn the Senate into a slaughter house/food packer and sell their output to the big food retailers – sell them to American food buyers.

At least the Senate would be doing something for a change.

So donnie is screwing the farmers by causing the farmers biggest overseas customer to slap tariffs on the farmers exports, making those exports unsellable in China, and is going to make it all better by buying and reselling the farmers’ unexportable stuff, adding, one would need to suppose, some abnormal costs to those unexportables (the Senate/Slaughter House) to American food retailers who will sell the newly, one would need to suppose lower quality and higher cost unexportables (the Senate/Slaughter House) to everyday god fearing Americans who have paid for the privilege out of the 25% increase that the same Americans will be paying at Walmart where donnie has screwed them just like the farmers.

At least everybody has a share in the screwing.

Milo Minderbinder has not been dead; he has just been lying dormant.