It's late 2025, and Donald Trump has done what he said he would do:
impose high tariffs - taxes on imports - on goods coming from abroad,
with extremely high tariffs on imports from China. These tariffs have
had exactly the effect many economists predicted, although Trump
insisted otherwise: higher prices for American buyers.
Let's say you have a business that relies on imported parts - maybe
from China, maybe from Mexico, maybe from somewhere else. What do you
do?
Well, U.S. trade law gives the executive branch broad discretion in tariff-setting, including the ability to grant exemptions in special
cases. So you apply for one of those exemptions. Will your request be
granted?
In principle, the answer should depend on whether having to pay those
tariffs imposes real hardship and threatens American jobs. In
practice, you can safely guess that other criteria will play a role.
How much money have you contributed to Republicans? When you hold
business retreats, are they at Trump golf courses and resorts?
I'm not engaging in idle speculation here. Trump imposed significant
tariffs during his first term, and many businesses applied for
exemptions. Who got them? A recently published statistical analysis
found that companies with Republican ties, as measured by their 2016
campaign contributions, were significantly more likely (and those with Democratic ties less likely) to have their applications approved.
https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2024/nov/27/paul-krugman-crony-capitalism-is-coming-to-america/
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