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Elon Musk Sides With Trump On Trade With China, Citing 25 Percent Import Duty On American Cars (cnbc.com)
Elon Musk believes China isn't playing fair in the car trade with the U.S. since it puts a 25 percent import duty on American cars, while the U.S. only does 2.5 percent for Chinese cars. "I am against import duties in general, but the current rules make things very difficult," Musk tweeted. "It's like competing in an Olympic race wearing lead shoes." CNBC reports: Tesla's Elon Musk is complaining to President Donald Trump about China's car tariffs. "Do you think the US & China should have equal & fair rules for cars? Meaning, same import duties, ownership constraints & other factors," Musk said on Twitter in response to a Trump tweet about trade with China. He added that no American car company is "allowed to own even 50% of their own factory" in the Asian country, but China's auto firms can own their companies in the U.S. Trump responded to Musk's tweets later at his steel and aluminum tariff press conference Thursday. "We are going to be doing a reciprocal tax program at some point, so that if China is going to charge us 25% or if India is going to charge us 75% and we charge them nothing ... We're going to be at those same numbers. It's called reciprocal, a mirror tax," Trump said after reading Musk's earlier tweets out loud.
I'm skeptical of tariffs in general, but they do seem like a reasonable way to get fair trade to actually happen. It appears to me that our previous globalist leaders have allowed other countries on unfair advantage both with tariffs and by not having to comply with the same environmental standards that the US has to comply with.
"America First" should be our mind set when negotiating trade, not other people first.
MAGA