George Will shows the tentacles of crony capitalism extending into our laundry rooms in one of his recent Washington Post articles. This is just another example where our government has chosen to prop up a special interest at the expense of the American consumer.
I have no doubt we will be seeing many articles celebrating the number of US manufacturing jobs that will be saved by this tariff. However, the article I'd most like to see is one that shows how much we are spending to save each job. While it will be easy to compare the average price of a washing machine before and after the tariff takes effect, it will be impossible to calculate the potential impact of those additional dollars if they had been spent on higher and better uses. I'd like to think we would all be better off if we spent the same amount of energy and resources creating new jobs and industries as we did protecting the old ones.
If Whirlpool wants US consumers to choose their products, they should make better or cheaper washing machines.
I have included George's description of tariff and the impact of the whirlpool tariff below.
This is a tax, paid by American consumers, on imports that exceed a certain quantity that, in the government’s opinion (formed with the assistance of domestic manufacturers), is excessive...The tariff/tax, which is designed to limit the choices of, and increase the prices paid by, American consumers would be 50 percent on all imported machines, after the first 1.2 million. U.S. customers caused the importation of about 3 million Samsung and LG washers in 2016.
Lagniappe: A previous Blog post about crony capitalism in the airline manufacturing sector.