Mexican tariffs will cost Oregon 'millions'

Source: The Oregonian

Mexico, angered by a ban on its trucks entering the United States, slapped tariffs on 90 U.S. products -- a move effective today that could cost Oregon exporters tens of millions of dollars. The duties include 20 percent tariffs on Christmas trees, pears and frozen potatoes, all of which Oregon sells to Mexico. A Mexican official confirmed his government chose the $2.4 billion worth of products partly to target states with powerful Democratic politicians. Mexico spent $748 million last year on goods from Oregon -- a state dominated by Democrats, from the governor to Congress.

The global economic meltdown is sparking protectionist measures worldwide. Footwear and apparel makers such as Oregon-based Nike and Columbia Sportswear fear a proliferation of tariffs on products made in China and elsewhere abroad.

Mexico's abrupt move this week came in retaliation for a provision supported by the Teamsters union and tacked onto a major spending bill that President Barack Obama signed earlier this month. "The vote was to save jobs for the unions, but it's going to cause problems for several other industries," said Bill Brewer, executive director of the Oregon Potato Commission.

He said the United States could lose its entire $80 million in annual french-fry exports to Mexico, for example, because Canadian competitors won't have to pay $16 million in tariffs. Most of those fries came from the Northwest.

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Read more: http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2009/03/mexican_tariffs_will_cost_oreg.html

:sarcasm:

NAFTA has done wonders for Ohio thus far. :sarcasm:

The duties include 20 percent tariffs on Christmas trees, pears and frozen potatoes, all of which Oregon sells to Mexico.

What this "article" leaves out is that all of these can be grown in Mexico. In Oregon, all the pears are harvested mostly by migrant mexican laborers anyway. I say these tariffs are good for Mexico because they will spur domestic employment there.

And I don't have any sympathy for Nike and Columbia. They make their shoes for about $1/pair using slave labor in China and elsewhere and sell them here for $100. It's disgusting. They could make them here, paying a reasonable wage, and still make tons of money. But if you'd seen the palatial Nike campus west of Portland, you'd know why they like it the way it is. Gold-plated faucets in the lavishly appointed executive suites don't come cheap, you know.

And, really, who cares about "french fry exports?" Since potatoes can easily be grown in many areas of Mexico, why shouldn't they make their own "french fries?" It's silly to grow and slice them up here and then truck them thousands of miles.

which makes trade advantageous to both partners. David Ricardo showed how that worked almost 200 years ago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage

It serves as an excuse for importing just about everything we buy. Importing practically everything we buy is why the U.S. economy is in the toilet. The economy is in the toilet because there is so much unemployment. People can't pay their bills or pay for goods and services because they are losing their jobs. When people have no money to spend, that is referred to as a depression.

Comparative advantage only works when applied to excess production, that is the excess of production over what the country can consume internally. When a country imports those "staple" goods that it can produce locally, that leads to local mass unemployment and eventual depression.

Mexico importing potato products from Oregon is going to put Mexican potato farmers out of business. The U.S. using corn to make ethanol (a thoroughly stupid use of corn) drove up the price of corn so that Mexican agribusinesses were exporting corn to the U.S. and Mexican workers couldn't afford to buy food.

Ricardo's theories are just as much crap today as they were 200 years ago.

- or maybe even in the San Joachin, even though we could. Better to grow them where there's more reliable water, like the South East US- and trade something else for them.

Not sure if you can grow pears in Mexico. Maybe some few places- but not well.

So it makes sense to grow pears in Oregon and exchange them for things like Papaya or bananas.

That of course has nothing to do with the abuses you cite- the theory is valid- and works if implemented correctly.

One of my biggest beefs with trade policy- which I had a major argument with a British colleague of mine some years ago about (aren't they doing great?) centered on Chilean pear imports that were causing Oregonians to have literally cut down their orchards. That's not comparative advantage based on natural differences in productive capability- but rather disparities in labor and envirnmental regulations.

These disparities lead to a "race to the bottom" that turns out not to be in anyone's interest.

Fair trade, on the other hand- as opposed to so called "free" trade above, does advantage and enrich both parties.

This can sort of tangentially be illustrated in an exerpt from one of my all time favorite essays "the Laws of Human Stupidity"

THE THIRD (AND GOLDEN)BASIC LAW

The Third Basic Law assumes, although it does not state it explicitly, that human beings fall into four basic categories: the helpless, the intelligent, the bandit and the stupid. It will be easily recognized by the perspicacious reader that these four categories correspond to the four areas I, H, S, B, of the basic graph (see below).



If Tom takes an action and suffers a loss while producing a gain to Dick, Tom's mark will fall in field H: Tom acted helplessly. If Tom takes an action by which he makes a gain while yielding a gain also to Dick, Tom's mark will fall in area I: Tom acted intelligently. If Tom takes an action by which he makes a gain causing Dick a loss, Tom's mark will fall in area B: Tom acted as a bandit. Stupidity is related to area S and to all positions on axis Y below point O. As the Third Basic Law explicitly clarifies:

A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.

When confronted for the first time with the Third Basic Law, rational people instinctively react with feelings of skepticism and incredulity. The fact is that reasonable people have difficulty in conceiving and understanding unreasonable behaviour. But let us abandon the lofty plane of theory and let us look pragmatically at our daily life. We all recollect occasions in which a fellow took an action which resulted in his gain and our loss: we had to deal with a bandit. We also recollect cases in which a fellow took an action which resulted in his loss and our gain: we had to deal with a helpless person.

We can recollect cases in which a fellow took an action by which both parties gained: he was intelligent. Such cases do indeed occur. But upon thoughtful reflection you must admit that these are not the events which punctuate most frequently our daily life. Our daily life is mostly, made of cases in which we lose money and/or time and/or energy and/or appetite, cheerfulness and good health because of the improbable action of some preposterous creature who has nothing to gain and indeed gains nothing from causing us embarrassment, difficulties or harm. Nobody knows, understands or can possibly explain why that preposterous creature does what he does. In fact there is no explanation - or better there is only one explanation: the person in question is stupid.

Down here in N. Calif we export all kinds of fruit to Japan. Mexico is a secondary market

shit Mexico can import to the US which we can't grow or produce for ourselves either. Maybe it's time to impose our own tariffs...oh, that's right...our Dem leaders tongue kissing the pugs signed our right to retaliate in kind away from us in their infinite wisdom and against the will of 80% of the US population.

and those have to be shipped as well.

Not to be dismissive of your point, but it's like the Indian "nukes for mangos" ridiculousness.

Cars or papayas? Which is a higher value item? :shrug:

Just that trade can be advantageous to both parties (and if done correctly enriches both parties).

Speaking of Indian (or some Aussie) mangos they are MUCH tastier than the typical North American mangos, which tend to be kind of stringy.

:9

of the teamster's union in stopping all those hardworking Mexican truckers from making a living.

What the asshole didn't talk about was how union drivers might actually make enough money to own a home. They might have quality health insurance coverage. They might have vacation pay. They might have some protections regarding work rules. They might be able to afford to send their kids to college.

But, nooooo. He wants to allow the Mexican truckers to come in and undercut the wages of American truckers. And to undercut the hard-earned gains American union and non-union drivers have won over the years.

Fuck this NAFTA crap. I'll gladly pay twice for a Christmas tree if it means Americans get to keep good jobs with decent benefits.

Plenty of nice Douglas firs come out of North Carolina and you can get lots of other kinds from my home state of Michigan. We need the business.

Worry more about lax Mexican standards in training and inspecting. In addition, with the drug stuff going on down there, I would expect that the trucks offer more smuggling opportunities, like the druggies really need them.

NC and MI as well as OR...the tariffs are imposed on products from a country, not on a particular state. But thanks for the solidarity.

we don't like and refuse to do what we said we would do.

If President Obama is going to be able to negotiate complicated international agreements in the Middle East and elsewhere, it will help to have a reputation for living up to existing international agreements, not unilaterally walking away from what we've decided we don't like (cowboy diplomacy). Any negotiation will involve painful give and take from all sides. How will he be trusted as a negotiator if others know he will walk away from any agreement when parts of it are unpopular?

program anyways.

Those idiots are in the middle of a drug war - they can't even keep track of their police, not to mention where products are originating from.

We should do more to discourage other countries from meddling in our politics.

> We should do more to discourage other countries from meddling in our politics.

Said with a straight face too!
:rofl:

fuck nafta.

Just curious.

have to have their trucks safety inspected annually, acquire a CDL license, maintain massive insurance policies, have annual health physicals including drug screening, submit to drug or alcohol testing anytime they are stopped whether they are driving a semi or not and be bound by a lower blood alcohol content than other non cdl holders, and required to keep a log and be able to prove they haven't been on the road for more than 8 (or is it 10) hours during a 24 hour period?? Probably.

than probably, but thanks anyway.

operating trucks in the other's country. I don't know if Mexico has lived up to its agreement to allow American trucks, but I haven't heard complaints that American trucks are kept out.

If they have kept out our trucks and we want to keep out their trucks, it should be easy to renegotiate that part of NAFTA, though it would make you wonder which side wanted the trucking provision in there in the first place.

For one thing, Republicans would love to replace unionized US dockworkers with cheap labor. In that pursuit it would be easier to bypass US ports and then truck the goods from Mexico to locations throughout the US.

or any other nation for that matter...stop giving away our jobs. Stop making American workers compete with slave labor. How hard is that to see? sheesh..