November 21, 2023
In tough times or better days, Americans have always found much for which to be grateful. Lately, this has been no easy task with the return of Jimmy Carter-levels of inflation walloping family paychecks and savings over the past three years. Meanwhile, this year’s Thanksgiving Day meal’s cost remains historically high.
Our nation would be far more thankful if the Fed were not fervently attempting to control inflation through endless interest rate hikes to slow the economy, the equivalent of attempting to get a cat out of a tree by throwing a dog at it. There are far better (and more humane) solutions, but it would require politicians and banking regulators to comprehend the problem.
The two primary causes of high inflation include unanticipated events, such as a drought or global pandemic that create supply shortages, and calculated fiscal policies, such as the 40 percent increase in the U.S. money supply courtesy of Joe Biden’s spending sprees of several trillion dollars that predictably devalued our currency.
In rare instances, there is a third inflationary culprit, protectionist trade policies, where the government sets an artificial market price for common goods or commodities, such as steel. Presidents from FDR to Donald Trump have enacted steel tariffs on foreign imports, typically for political reasons. The results invariably produce more harm than good, succeeding only to raise costs for consumers and businesses, slow economic growth, suppress wages, and slash jobs.
Potential new steel tariffs are back on the table, but not through Washington’s doing. Ohio steel goliath Cleveland-Cliffs petitioned the Commerce Department this year for an increase in imported tin-plate steel tariffs by as much as 294 percent on eight of our trading partners: Canada, the U.K., Germany, South Korea, The Netherlands, Taiwan, Turkey, and China.
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