Tariffs

Right now, the World over, this is probably the most important news item. President Trump's implementation of tariffs against all countries certainly has an economic impact everywhere. But it has a different impact depending on your country. I am from and live in Honduras. We were hit with 10% tariffs, the opposition says it is the governments fault because of their socialist leaning policies. I kind of doubt that, the same tariff was placed on El Salvador and their President is even providing prisons to the Trump administration plus it is a very conservative government.

The thing is, if you look at trade between the US and Honduras one notices that last year we exported 3 Billion USD worth of goods and imported 5 Billion USD worth of goods. Better said we have a 2 Billion USD trade deficit. Does that mean we should put 10% tariffs on US goods to try and even out the field? No, we actually import from the US goods that are necessary for the country, for example wheat. We can't afford the luxury of tariffing wheat because it would just make food for everyone more expensive. As for other stuff, like cars, we don't make cars what sense is there in special tariffs for cars? The government already taxes the buying of cars enough, we don't need or probably can pay additional taxes.

So no, we just let the US impose tariffs on the goods we export to them, you know, like bananas, coffee, clothing, minerals and just let what is going to happen, happen. Now personally, I am kind of surprised by this because I really have no idea what the idea behind the tariffs is.

For example I am quite sure at first it was a means of getting enough money from them that income tax would not be needed. Or bring manufacturing back to the US. Then it was to reinforce the borders against illegal immigrants or drug smugglers. Then it was to have an even playing field. Yesterday I read it was to get the US ready for when AI takes over most jobs. Today the idea is to have everyone accept zero tariffs so free trade is really free trade.

Of course a few of these are contradictions, like if you lower tariffs to zero, you will not have manufacturing going back to the US or tariffs paying for income tax. And I wonder how tariffs can offset any negative impact of AI. It certainly has me scratching my head thinking what the real reason behind the tariffs is.

In the meantime the stock markets are taking huge hits and even crypto has been hit and hard. I really thought crypto could escape the stock market crashes, but it seems they are also tied. Man even gold is not doing as well as I thought it would.

Now, understand this is just me asking some questions and giving some thoughts that just came to my head. Personally I will not be hit harder than most people, I am not invested in stocks plus what crypto I have is negligible. I own no gold and do have a small number of coins that have some silver in them but are worth very little. So market fluctuations do not hit me directly. I know that a market crash eventually does hit everyone so I am bracing for it. All I can do is write more on Steemit and hope that for some reason STEEM does not crash and in fact goes up.