Conrad Putzier
Appearances
WSJ What’s News
The Impact of Trump’s Tariffs on the Rest of His Agenda
the interesting thing here is that there's a real connection between what the U.S. imports and what it exports. Think about China, right? Like China, essentially the economy grew rich partly by exporting a lot of stuff to America. What that created in return was more wealth in China, which created demand for American goods and American services.
WSJ What’s News
The Impact of Trump’s Tariffs on the Rest of His Agenda
And something like that has happened around the world where just globalization and free trade and all these exports that have flown into America have created demand for American goods. And that's really helped American exporters. So, of course, if you now restrict imports through tariffs, that reverberates back to exporters. That hurts them, at least in the short run.
WSJ What’s News
The Impact of Trump’s Tariffs on the Rest of His Agenda
There's also the threat of retaliation that just puts American exporters at a disadvantage. And finally, there's this really fascinating basic connection between imports and exports, which is if more ships with stuff from Asia, for example, arrive at the port of Seattle, there's all these ships and empty containers that have to go back.
WSJ What’s News
The Impact of Trump’s Tariffs on the Rest of His Agenda
And all those ships and empty containers are great for exporters because it's a way for them to ship goods abroad cheaply.
WSJ What’s News
The Impact of Trump’s Tariffs on the Rest of His Agenda
Well, they're going to be different for sure because the tariffs now are just a lot broader and they impact a lot more countries and a lot more goods than the first time around. But what happened in the first Trump administration is probably not a good sign for exporters because some of them were hurt. A great example here is the apple industry in Washington state.
WSJ What’s News
The Impact of Trump’s Tariffs on the Rest of His Agenda
Apple orchards in the state have made a lot of money over the years selling them to China and India. And during the first Trump administration, Trump put tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. And then what China and India both did in return was put tariffs on American agricultural exports. That trade fight ended and India lifted its tariffs on American apples.
WSJ What’s News
The Impact of Trump’s Tariffs on the Rest of His Agenda
But still, the market didn't really recover.