tariffs – Coffee Spoons

Happy Liberation Day

Yesterday I created a map detailing the new tariff rates released by President Trump on Wednesday. I was inspired by the curious inclusion of several small territories with almost no trade with the United States, and a few of whom are uninhabited. What follows is the graphic and the accompanying text I wrote as I wrote it.

I say that only because some people have not entirely caught the…let’s say tone with which I wrote.

All hail the new tariffs. Very obviously, foreign governments will be paying us lots of cash money. Places like Lesotho, with its so-called high rates of poverty, AIDS, and under-development, are clearly just fronts for the rich. Because their tariffs on us are turning them into the richest, most luxurious places on Earth.

Now I don’t know for sure, but some people say the shithole places like Nambia are really cash cows. Nerds tell me places like Nambia don’t exist, but their just idiots looking in the wrong wardrobe. Genius-level intellects like me can easily find Nambia on a map.

There are some very bad ombres out there, and I’m looking at you, Señor Diego Garcia. Some say you’re a thug with bad tattoos whom we should disappear to a secret black site. But the nerds keep telling me you’re not a person, just an island. That you’re not an illegal alien, but a British island where no civilians live, just US soldiers on a secret military base. But we need that money to pay for all the tax cuts for the rich. So we’ll just make our troops there pay Señor Garcia’s tariffs until he stops being lazy and pays us.

Then I’m looking at places like Christmas Island. That Santa Claus is really a bad guy. I know some of you like him—I like him too; he was good to me when I was a child. But all he does is export toys and joys. And that needs to be taxed. So I need Christmas Island to give us all their very real Christmas money.

Finally, I’m looking at Heard Island and McDonald Islands who’re trying to hide near the Antarctic Circle with all the other bad guys and their fortresses of solitude and vaults of swimmable coins. Sure, those nerds keep telling me these islands are uninhabited. But Amber Heard and Ronald McDonald are real people, in league with the Hamburgler, stealing all our rightful American money. The nerds say the islands are only inhabited by penguins. So if you want to say that Amber and Ronald are really just penguins, then we’re going to get all our sweet tariff money from the so-called penguins. Some of whom are emperors. Can you believe that? Emperor penguins? Emperors are rich. So we need to liberate those penguin dollars from the penguin monarchy.

Credit for the piece is mine.

Tariffs Are a Tax

This piece from the New York Times isn’t really even a graphic. It’s a factette, or small fact. The article is about how tariffs are raising the price of certain goods, in this case a bicycle. Tariffs do not add money to the US Treasury, they are instead an additional price paid by US consumers on goods—not services—originating from outside the US.

Thankfully I can't ride a bike — Thankfully I can’t ride a bike

Sometimes a big chart is not as impactful as one big number. And here, in the context of this story, a graphic showing trade flows between the US and Mexico may have been useful. But the real gut punch is showing how the tariffs on Mexico, for this one particular bike, could cost the US consumer an additional $90. A tariff is just another word for a tax paid by the American consumer.

Credit for the piece goes to the New York Times graphics department.

Trade War Retaliation

About a week and a half ago the Economist published an article about the retaliatory actions of the European Union and China against the tariffs imposed by the Trump administration. Of course last week we had a theme of sorts with lineages and ancestry. So this week, back to the fun stuff.

What makes today’s piece particularly relevant is that over the weekend, Trump announced he might increase the tariffs proposed, but not yet implemented, upon Chinese goods. So some economists looked at the retaliatory tariffs proposed by the EU and China.

Ultimately Trump's tariffs are not paid by foreign governments, but by US citizens. — Ultimately Trump’s tariffs are not paid by foreign governments, but by US citizens.

Each targets Trump voters, albeit of different types. But China appears more willing to engage in a brutal fight. Its tariff proposal would not just harm Trump voters, but would also harm Chinese citizens. The EU’s plan appears tailored to maximise the pain on Trump voters, but minimise that felt by its own citizens.

A few minor points. I like how the designers chose to highlight high impact categories with colour. Lower impact shares are two shades of light grey. But after that, the scale changes. I wonder how the maps would compare if each had been set to the same scale. It looks doable as the bottom range of the maximum bin is 6% for the EU and 8% for China. (Their high limit is much higher at 22% compared to the EU’s 10%.)

That said, it does a good job of showing the different geographic footprints of the two retaliatory tariff packages. Tomorrow—barring breaking news—we will look at why that is important.

Credit for the piece goes to the Economist Data Team.

Trade with Canada

Yesterday we looked at trade with China. Today, we look at Canada, allegedly ripping off America. But what does the data say? Thankfully the Washington Post put together a piece looking at just that topic. And it uses a few interesting graphics to explore the idea.

The easiest and least controversial graphic is that below, which breaks down constituent parts of our bilateral trade.

The article also points out that very small dairy section, which is one focus of the administration's complaints. But look how tiny it is… — The article also points out that very small dairy section, which is one focus of the administration’s complaints. But look how tiny it is…

Note that the graphic does not just show the traditional goods part of the equation, but also breaks out services. And as soon as you consider that part of the economy the US trade deficit with Canada turns from deficit into surplus.

But the graphic also uses a pair of maps to look at that same goods vs. goods and services split.

Parts of the design of the map like the colours, meh. But the designers did a great job by breaking the standard convention of placing the Prime Meridian at the centre of the map. Instead, because the United States is the story here, the map places North America at the map’s centre. It does lead to a weird fracturing of the Asian continent, but so long as China is largely intact, that is all that matters to the trade story.

This all just goes to show that it is important to begin a conversation about policy with facts and understand the actual starting point rather than the perceived starting point.

Credit for the piece goes to Philip Bump.

The Facts on Tariffs

Unless you avoid the news, we all heard a lot about tariffs this weekend. So this morning, instead of going with some other things I found, I decided I wanted to look and see just what the data is on tariffs. Turns out Trump is wrong on the data about tariffs. In short, in 2016 the US had a slightly higher average tariff for all products at 1.61%. The EU was at 1.6%. And the Canadians? They charged an outrageous 0.8%.

The data comes from the World Bank.

And over breakfast, I did not really have the time to clean this graphic up, so it shows the whole world. Though it goes to show you, the western countries against which Trump raged this weekend generally have low tariffs, some lower than what the US.

Credit for this one is mine.