Revealed: Trump-donating companies dodged tariffs during his first term

06 January

Donald Trump speaks at Turning Point USA's AmericaFest in Phoenix, Arizona, U.S., December 22, 2024. REUTERS/Cheney Orr/File Photo

After defeating Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential race, President-elect Donald Trump didn't back down from his promise to impose stiff new tariffs. Trump, in fact, doubled down, vowing to charge 25 percent across-the-board tariffs on all goods coming into the United States from Canada and Mexico.

Many Trump critics have been warning that those tariffs, if implemented, will make inflation much worse. Some companies are already raising their prices.

According to The Guardian's Callum Jones, however, some companies that donated to Trump's 2016 campaign dodged tariffs during his first term as president.

"With Donald Trump threatening to impose steep tariffs upon his return to office this month," Jones explains in an article published on January 6. "U.S. firms are bracing for impact. But an analysis of Trump's last presidency identified one way to boost their chances of avoiding the levies: donating to the Republican Party."

Jones continues, "While the initial stage of the president-elect's tariff agenda is designed to hit America's largest trading partners — Canada, Mexico and China — it is U.S. firms that pick up the bill, paying duties imposed on the goods they buy from these markets. Such additional costs can prove devastating."

The Guardian reporter cites a study published on July 29, 2024. The study names some of the companies that dodged tariffs during Trump's first term.

"The federal government typically allows a carefully selected group of businesses from paying such levies," Jones notes. "Thousands of companies applied for exemptions, and permission to import items without paying a new tariff, during Trump's first presidency."

Jesus Salas, an associate finance professor at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, anticipates that the same thing will happen during Trump's second term and finds it "shocking" that companies that supported Democrats in 2016 were, according to the study, less likely to avoid tariffs.

Jones quotes Salas as saying, "(There are) many reasons to think some of this behavior is going to continue…. It's going to be the same staff, probably the same ideas, so we'd assume it's going to be the same behavior."

Read The Guardian's full article at this link.

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