If you haven’t heard, a guy who started out in the business world with hundreds of millions of dollars he’d been given by his family, only to bankrupt himself multiple times, is running our country’s foreign trade policy. One of his biggest ideas was to begin a trade war with China by applying tariffs to items imported from China by the United States. The result has been welfare checks for suffering farmers in the rural heartland that constitutes the supporter base of the Republican Party. Now, in retaliation for China’s retaliation for Trump’s tariffs, Trump is reportedly mulling over adding an additional $300 billion more in tariffs on Chinese exports to the U.S. in the coming days or weeks or months. This is not good news for large swaths of the American business class: Much of American retail business’ profits depends on cheap labor in China to manufacture what that business sells.
On Thursday, over 660 retailers signed a letter warning Trump that adding more fuel to the fire of his personal trade war with China will only lead to more fire. Trying to be as diplomatic as possible, after explaining that they completely agree that China needs to follow fairer trade practices, the retailers explain that “We remain concerned about the escalation of tit-for-tat tariffs. We know firsthand that the additional tariffs will have a significant, negative and long-term impact on American businesses, farmers, families and the U.S. economy. Broadly applied tariffs are not an effective tool to change China’s unfair trade practices.”
The letter warns that if reports of Trump’s ideas on escalating this trade war are true, then he is putting more than 2 million jobs in jeopardy. Losing 2 million jobs is not good.
The companies that signed the letter include Target, Macy's, IKEA, Costco, Walmart, J. Crew, Gap, and Footlocker.