CHINA/TARIFFS/TRADE WAR/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “The fallout from President Donald Trump’s tariffs and China’s countertariffs—which formally went into effect on Friday [7-6-18]—will have the greatest impact on the U.S. counties that voted Mr. Trump into office. The U.S. tariffs on China will initially hit about $34 billion of goods, with plans in place to raise that total to $50 billion. The tariffs will fall mostly on Chinese aerospace products, information technology, auto parts and medical instruments. Beijing is retaliating with tariffs on $34 billion of American goods, aimed at farm products, cars and crude oil. The U.S. tariffs will provide a protective buffer for some companies that compete with Chinese imports, but Beijing’s retaliation will affect huge swaths of the American heartland, according to an analysis from Moody’s Analytics, which calculated how much of gross domestic product in each county is in industries that would benefit from the protection or be hurt by the retaliation. The retaliatory tariffs will fall especially hard—affecting more than 25% of a county’s economy—in nearly 20% of the counties that voted for Trump, affecting eight million people. Only 3% of the counties that voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton, with a total population of 1.1 million, would be so heavily hit. In contrast, only 8% of counties that voted for Mr. Trump, a Republican, have protective buffers for more than a quarter of their economy.”
–Maureen Linke and Josh Zumbrun, “Chinese Tariffs Hit Trump Counties Harder,” The Wall Street Journal, July 6, 2018 5:30 am