Trumps tariffs adding $20,000 to cost of building a home

Coon hates capitalism, he wants a shitty house over a quality one.

 

I don't think he said 20%, but $20,000.
Still seems a little high, but not a lot to high.

 

If Canadian lumber has a high tariff, wouldn't the American lumber be cheaper? The purpose of captitalist companies is to maximize profit. Sometimes that involves lowest costs and sometimes it doesn't. I don't have time to explain it all to you. I simply point out that you are having an emotional response to something you don't even understand.

 

The trees cost about the same the difference is that in Canada the government owns the trees and they charge a fixed fee for each one cut. In the US this is done by private companies so there is a biding system for control of the fees. This adds cost to American lumber.
So when tariffs are added the cost of fees (and other items like sawmills) can, and do, raise there prices to match the now increased cost of Canadian lumber.
On the surface this seems like an okay idea. American lumber companies make more money and hire more people (maybe). The problem is the 25% price increase is passed to the next customer in the supply chain. If the next customers, say home builders, employee more people than the lumber business, saw mills mostly, more jobs are lost because of the higher lumber cost than are gained in the lumber business. This is why in the US it is usually not a good idea to put tariffs on "raw materials."
This problem is more easily seen in the steel tariffs where the price increases are easy to find and the number of people required to make steel is well known. In the case of steel for example, each job added to the industry costs the end consumer several hundreds of thousands of dollars. In the case of steel it also costs sales to the manufactures that use the steel because their foreign sales also go down because other countries don't have tariffs.

 

Dont know if it will be cheaper, but my hope is that the money I pay goes to American workers for American products. There comes a time where we need to decide what is more important price or our future.

 

Hmm, I see.
Tax cuts for corporations and rich people = good.
Tax increase for everyone = good.

 

The primary purpose of the tariffs is to motivate free trade. The secondary reason is to make up for the tariffs that have been imposed on our exports. It is a very good idea. Free trade is best but we have never had free trade on this planet.

 

But to your point. They don't make things cheaper.
The rest is open to debate.

 

Of course they don't. But in the case of lumber, it is possible that builders will move to using more American product. It doesn't cheapen anything but it helps motivate a move toward American products. Why do you think Canada has such high tariffs on American dairy products?

 

You made this up.

 

I think he means drywall.

 

Obama lowered taxes in 2010.

 

It's a bit high.
I bought what they call a villa around here. A townhouse anywhere else - so only 31/2 walls.
I contracted in February and the base price has increased from 249.5K to 260k in that time. I don't know what the price was before Trump's first lumber tariffs.

 

He extended the Bush tax cuts.

 

If you mean Obama extended GWB's tax cuts for the rich, then yes.

 

Why would he do such a thing? I've never heard of a Democrat not wanting to tax the rich?

 

I would prefer taxing everyone enough to bring down our debt combined with slashing programs until we are in the black. But that is just me.

 

There are a couple of things about Canadas tariffs on milk.
1- They have quotas on milk. Before the quotas are met the tariffs are okay. They have these quotas on their own dairy farmers as well. This is one reason they import more milk from the US than they produce themselves.

2- The US subsidizes it's dairy farmers to the tune of $22 billion dollars. So if Canada didn't put a quota on it they would go out of business. And if the US dropped their subsidies milk would go up in price.

3- Milk is expensive in Canada because of this.

 

We can agree on that one.

 

I've never heard of a post-JFK Dem actually cutting taxes for anyone.

 

You think they would be praising Trump's tariffs because they bring in more money to government. If Obama did it they would be singing his praises.

 

If Obama did anything Trump has done, they'd praise Him.

 

The last thing a globalist Democrat is going to do is stand up to the globalist who are fleecing the American people they hate.

 

He also lowered payroll taxes by 2%.

 

For a year. He then raised them back to where they were.
Note that this is payroll tax, not federal income tax.