Tuesday, November 5, 2024

Last minute Trump promises — from more tariffs to less chip money — add final wrinkles to 2024 contest

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New economic policy promises typically aren’t rolled out during the final weeks of a presidential campaign. But that’s one more norm Donald Trump and his allies have been upending in recent days.

The pledges have been coming fast and furious, including one last escalation of Trump’s tariff promises on the final day of campaigning with the former president pledging to impose new blanket tariffs on Mexico.

“You’re the first ones I’ve told it to,” Trump told a crowd in Raleigh, N.C., on the last full day of campaigning Monday. “Congratulations, North Carolina.”

It’s a pledge that came alongside recent discussions from Trump and his allies of dramatically changing course on a signature Biden-era semiconductor bill that has catalyzed over $400 billion in semiconductor sector investments to even renewed talk of repealing the Affordable Care Act.

Whether all of this helps Trump’s chance in a tossup contest remain to be seen, but it’s yet another factor for last minute voters to consider as the 2024 contest reaches its end.

The series of promises are likely to further worry economists who have long noted that Trump’s various plans could spur inflation anew or upend key economic sectors if he takes even a fraction of the dramatic actions referenced on the campaign trail.

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally on Monday, Nov. 4, in Raleigh, N.C. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) · ASSOCIATED PRESS

What was perhaps the last policy unveiling came on Monday when Donald Trump barnstormed across the country and had a new message for America’s largest trading partner: Mexico.

“If they don’t stop this onslaught of criminals and drugs coming into our country,” he told the Raleigh crowd, then “I’m going to immediately impose a 25% tariff on everything they send into the United States of America.”

He added that if that doesn’t work, he will just go up to as high as 100% duties on Mexican goods.

It was a new addition to Trump’s intense tariff promises, from 60% duties on Chinese goods to 10-20% blanket duties on trading allies to 200% duties on automobiles from Mexico.

Trump claimed that he wanted to hold off announcing this last policy because he didn’t want Vice President Kamala Harris to copy it. That’s unlikely, with Harris and her allies regularly assailing Trump’s tariff ideas as akin to a $4,000 sales tax on the American people.

Tariffs are taxes paid by companies at US points of entry as they bring in goods. Those additional costs are largely passed along to consumers.

The reference to a 100% tariff on Mexico led Brendan Duke, a left-leaning economist, to increase his estimate of how much Trump’s tariffs would cost a typical family.

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