There are many American companies that have factories in the countries that get the tariff increase. https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a63652712/president-trump-tariffs-automotive-industry-impacts/ Now they have to stop their production.
Turns out he was just playing 4D Chess. Everyone took the bait on Canada and Mexico but the real one was China.
None of us have a clue as to what the strat and goals were and are; the speculation is ridiculous. All we know for certain is that China's getting 10% tariff and they are about the retaliate with their own. We don't even know if that was agreed prior or not.
they already did. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/02/04/us/trump-tariffs-news China’s response: Beijing’s countermeasures include additional tariffs on coal, natural gas, farm machinery and other products from the United States. The Chinese government said it had also restricted the export of some critical minerals, including many used in high-tech industries. Chinese regulators also announced an antimonopoly investigation into Google that could disrupt its dealings with Chinese companies.
Trump can't even play checkers well. It's quite obvious he thought markets would welcome his projects and they didn't. Now he's hedging his bets trying to rethink his plan pretending he's winning something. This is term one all over again many wins claimed but how many actually were better off for the exercise. Let me know when US gas prices drop 50%. Watch him whine if Oil goes to $80 it'll be everyone else's fault ( he'll blame OPEC, he'll blame US producers for not drilling nonprofitable wells, and of course he'll blame Canada even though he clearly stated he doesn' t need our Oil ).
The TDS on this board is ridiculous. Trump wanted certain things or there would be tariffs. Mexico and Canada both pledged to do those things. Thus the delay to see if they actually follow up.
He didn’t cave. 1.5b in border security commitments by the counterparties and troop commitments- how is that caving he didn’t have to do anything. Cave? They fear the guy. you know who else fears him, isis and hamas. He showed one of their leaders a photo of his house and then he assasinated the head of Iranian national security in broad daylight
Make sense. China is not getting any business to manufacture stuff anymore so why would it need to import all those coal, natural gas which are all used as inputs in its manufacturing business? Farm machinery? China can make its own machines. Why does it want to import from US? And for rare earth metals, China is the largest producer, that's true but it's not the only one in the world. Brazil, Vietnam, India, Australia, Canada and even USA itself are all producers of rare earth metals so Trump is not worried. Investigation on Google? LOL It's not going to do anything unless China is fine with losing Google which is the one of the few foreign companies that are still operating in China creating jobs in China. So at the end, it amounts to nothing.
It seems some on this thread can't think through things clearly. You are 100% correct. They cannot stand to admit that they backed down. The two countries best not renege. Or they will indeed have something real to hate him for when he increases and applies the tariffs.