Opinions on Trump’s new tariffs on LATAM

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Trump announced new import tariffs around the world causing a trade war and all Latin American countries will now have to pay 10% on imports to the USA with the exception of Nicaragua who will have to pay 18% and Venezuela will have to pay 16%.

Do you think these tariffs are going to have an effect on your country and are you shocked that your country was on the list?

I personally assumed Argentina would be exempt considering Milei’s friendship with Trump and Musk, but that didn’t happen.

But what do you all think?

Comments

  1. Joaquin_the_42nd Avatar

    I don’t think this administration can withstand imposing tariffs on everyone for too long. Specially once US citizens become aware of how much shit they rely on from abroad.

  2. jptrrs Avatar

    Correction: they are import tariffs. It isn’t the exporting country who pays them, it’s the one importing, that is, the US. Yes, that might have an effect on bilateral trade, but to say the countries will “pay” is just spreading Trump’s ignorance around.

  3. Armagon1000 Avatar

    It’s a speedrun to Great Depression 2 is what i think.

    Venezuela having higher tariffs is really just because we’re enemy #1 in the eyes of this admin.

  4. breadexpert69 Avatar

    We dont pay for it. American citizens do.

    The only concern we have is if our imports to the US lose consumers. But to be honest, if that happens then China and Europe are there to replace that market.

  5. pkthu Avatar

    So LATAM basically are exempt from the brunt of the tariffs?

    It’s mostly 35 % to China, 45% to Vietnam, 49% to Cambodia and 20% to EU, 26% to India, 25% to South Korea, 32% to Taiwan etc etc vs. 10% from almost all of us in LATAM

    That I consider a win for most LATAM industries.

    The gringos won’t be able to replace all imports with domestic production. It’s a huge opportunity for us to replace Chinese/southeast Asian/european goods in the U.S. market.

  6. bastardnutter Avatar

    Oh no!

    We’ll have to trade with the rest of the world like we usually do

  7. Frequent_Skill5723 Avatar

    What I think is we got a front-row seat to the biggest freak show in history.

  8. SnooRevelations979 Avatar

    Brazil is going to pick up a lot more ag business from China like they did the first time around.

  9. Away_Individual956 Avatar

    Idk why the US is all of a sudden acting like they’re this super self-sufficient country. They have no substantial amount of robust industries anymore, they’re no China. Their deindustrialization was extremely severe in the last decades and their market is more reliant on other countries than ever, especially China (which was the country they tariffed the most).

    These measures will surely backfire and influence their consumer prices, affecting the American lower/middle class.

    I’m glad Brazil and most Latam countries took the lighter hit from this tariff war, though. Only 10% compared to the others. And I’m glad that, at least in Brazil’s case, the US is not our main economic partner.

  10. thatbr03 Avatar

    the orange man kinda deserves the nobel peace to honest, never in my life i thought i would see china, korea and japan working together

    some funny years are to come

  11. rinkoplzcomehome Avatar

    Bro, you are the ones paying for it, not us

  12. CaribbeanCowgirl27 Avatar

    My mom works in a company that exports food products from the DR to US. She said that if the US buys less due to the tariffs importers now have to pay, Dominicans will eat better and cheaper. Plantains, pineapples, peppers and bananas? Only the best gets imported, so the Dominican market will have access to these premium products. It might also encourage new trading partners to buy the surplus of products. Coffee and chocolate comes to mind for that one.

  13. Aviskr Avatar

    If not quickly removed they will cause a recession. Most of the stuff that the US imports can’t easily be replaced, if it’s even possible, so it will result in lower consumption slowing down the entire economy.

    But I don’t think Trump will bring the whole world down with him. Luckily, he has been giving everyone ample warning. Here in LATAM we have been getting a lot closer to Asia than ever before, and as the US falls apart we will get even closer.

    It’s not gonna be pretty but the whole world has been preparing for this, so I think the impact to us will not be as bad as 2008.

  14. MarioDiBian Avatar

    I think reciprocity isn’t a bad idea. If this ends up with countries lowering tariffs and more free trade, it would be great. In the meantime, it’s American consumers who will pay for the increasing prices due to tariffs.

    It will also affect countries that are very dependant on exporting their products to the US. In the case of Argentina, only 8% of our exports go to the US, so it won’t affect us like in other Latin American countries that rely on the US, like Colombia (26%) or eventually Mexico (82%).

  15. NewEntrepreneur357 Avatar

    Why would Argentina be spared? This is a “bro thinks he’s part of the team” situation, nobody from the current administration can even point to Argentina on a map.

  16. That1TimeN99 Avatar

    Brazil has a very high import tariffs. Buying imported stuff in Brazil is a nightmare.

  17. ElleWulf Avatar

    Britain could get away with these sort of policies in the 19th century because Britain was also the workshop of the world. So if you refused to “negotiate” you could wave goodbye to most of your modern goods.

    I don’t think these tariffs will last. The hope here seems to be that some of these countries might try to renegotiate their rates.

    As for LATAM. It will lower agricultural exports, and thus weaken the grip of estancias over the economy and thus politics for a bit, but China is trying to industrialize at neck pace next door and they’re hungry for raw material. I figure they’ll just rebalance their books by selling more to China.

  18. Ponchorello7 Avatar

    Is it on top of what we were already threatened with? This dude is gonna seriously affect the economic stability of the average American.

  19. ec1710 Avatar

    This mostly affects the US. The US imposes tariffs, other countries will retaliate, but it’s a war between the US and everyone else. It’s not everyone vs. everyone. If other countries are not very US-dependent, they should be fine, so long as this whole thing doesn’t lead to global recession.

  20. El-Diegote-3010 Avatar

    As the N°1 USA hater in the world, I completely support everything trump’s doing

  21. mauricio_agg Avatar

    It’s sheer stupidity, so every nation should expect that the rest of the world comply in order to keep a positive trade balance just because the United States decided to go 18th Century France regarding trade?

  22. lojaslave Avatar

    This is funny because it’s basically a 10%+ hike in VAT for people IN the USA. It is not paid by exporters, but by importers, it might impact trade of course, but only for things that can be produced locally in the USA, which does not include most of Ecuador’s major exports to the US.

    Many Americans, especially Republicans seem to think that it’s our countries that will pay for this, but in reality it is them who’ll be paying for this tax hike disguised as tariffs, most people are economically illiterate.

  23. dramirezf Avatar

    Please, understand that this really means that the us consumer will have to pay at least 10% more if they want coffee from here, for example. Tariff is payed by the importer and transferred to the consumer in the final price.

  24. SorryResponse33334 Avatar

    I live by the border, am originally from US, and even usb cables are more expensive in Mexico, even through mercado libre and not amazon

    I think things will get more expensive, at least until new trade deals are formed

  25. towerninja Avatar

    The Latin American countries don’t have to pay. The American importers have to pay

  26. atembao Avatar

    We have a free trade agreement with the U.S, so are not tariffs against it ??

  27. Conscious_Weather_26 Avatar

    It’s funny watching the US dismantle the internacional trading system, of which they are the main beneficiaries.

  28. PejibayeAnonimo Avatar

    I don’t like them but I hope the government doesn’t creates reciprocal tariffs because we already have high as fuck import taxes.

    Our economy will be affected for sure, because we will sell less coffee, banana, pinapples, chips from Intel and medical devices. But the economy would be even more affected if things imported from the US get more expensive.

  29. Howdyini Avatar

    Much smarter people than me have given up on trying to explain it. But there’s a part of me that thinks he’s just raising taxes on normal people to slash taxes on his friends.

    If every single import is 10% more expensive, that basically means the average USian is paying 10% tax to their government for everything. Am I missing something obvious here? If the new tariffs are flat increase, then they don’t really change the competitive import landscape, it’s the same economy with an extra tax for consumers.

  30. Atuk-77 Avatar

    I don’t think you understand tariffs, it will be US customers who will pay the tariffs not the countries that produce the items. Please correct your statement.

  31. Darkus_8510 Avatar

    As many have said this is not a tax on us, it’s on the person who is buying, ie you morons. My opinion is simple, have fun deindustrializing your country and then making industrialized goods more expensive to import. Yall are gonna suffer, worse case scenario for us is that we have to try to find other people to sell, which will hurt don’t get me wrong, but the US will probably suffer more

  32. Proof-Pollution454 Avatar

    Most magas don’t even know what tariffs

  33. These-Market-236 Avatar

    >Do you think these tariffs are going to have an effect on your country

    Surely some, but -although is impossible to imagine all the implications and how thing are going to play out in the end- we don’t export so much to the US.

    >and are you shocked that your country was on the list?

    No really.

    Supposedly, Milei will get a TLC/FTA cus him and Trump are besties. Very hard to believe.

    >But what do you all think?

    I think that sooner or latter you will discover that tariffs are payed directly or indirectly by the citizens of the country imposing them => they are just an other tax => it makes you poorer.

  34. Bear_necessities96 Avatar

    Well tariffs are paid for the importer not the exporter so they are for them not us

  35. Spiritual-Low-1072 Avatar

    I’m from Chile, and the tariffs on Chilean Copper make no sense. The USA relies heavily on imported copper because domestic production is insufficient to meet demand. Nearly 55% of the copper consumed in the U.S. comes from Chile. Imposing tariffs on Chilean copper would only hurt the U.S. economy by driving up costs, making copper more expensive, and reducing the competitiveness of key industries. Laptops, cars, electric vehicles, heavy machinery, and everything that relies on electricity, would become even more expensive compared to chinese products. While these tariffs may benefit american copper mining companies in the short term, they would ultimately harm the rest of the americans, including tech giants (trump’s friends)

    I understand that Trump wants to strengthen U.S. industries, but copper is not something that can simply be replaced with domestic production. It’s like Chile imposing tariffs on imported mining machinery (since we’re a mining country) that would directly hurt our own competitiveness. This policy is essentially shooting yourself in the foot on a marathon.

  36. South-Run-4530 Avatar

    I don’t really have an opinion. But let me see if I got this right.

    Our exports get more expensive for the US buyers, but since every country is being taxed everything is getting more expensive for the US anyway except Made In USA stuff, right?

    The demand for their homemade stuff will go up, because it’s the cheapest. Demand up, prices up. And they can’t stop buying our stuff, because they don’t produce what they buy from LatAm.

    So, in practice, everything is going to get more expensive for US people. Because they can’t stop buying our stuff until they build more infrastructure to manufacture the stuff they import.

    Is this correct? Yeah, I don’t have any opinions on this. KKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK

  37. RobbieCV Avatar

    Is going to create a worldwide depression. Latam is going to feel it, for sure, the good thing is that compared to a decade ago, China is the biggest trade partner for most of latam countries.

  38. paullx Avatar

    Are you joking? This is not as bad as it could be, in fact the USA would hurt itself more, so it is good I suppose.

  39. snail-the-sage Avatar

    They’re bad and dumb and stupid and I want out.

  40. MechanicPlenty Avatar

    I don’t think the US can deal with putting tariffs on Mexico. People stateside have no idea how much of their produce comes from Mexico which is a lot. Not to mention lack of labor is already making domestic produce more expensive. So much comes from Mexico I don’t genuinely think the US could take the hit. I think if he had targeted the tariffs on one industry or country the US would have a lot more impact. The ones that are going to suffer are poor and middle class Americans.

  41. ButterscotchFormer84 Avatar

    Can someone who understands better explain please?

    Why does Trump think a trade deficit is a bad thing?

    How is it realistic to have a trade balance, when a country’s goods may have more demand from US consumers than US goods have demand from their own consumers?