Illinois-based freight company official says tariffs are here to stay

(The Center Square) – In the wake of former President Donald Trump’s appearance at an economic forum in Chicago where he defended tariffs, a global freight insider doesn’t see any major impacts.

Trump wants to impose a 60% tariff on all Chinese goods, and a “universal’’ tariff of 10% or 20% on everything else that enters the United States. He argues that tariffs protect American factory jobs from foreign competition and deliver a host of other benefits.

“Tariffs are the greatest thing ever invented,” Trump said recently at a town hall event in Michigan.

Nick Klein, vice president of sales at OEC Group Midwest Region, an Illinois-based global freight forwarder, said tariffs have already been in place for years.

“They don’t go away,” said Klein. “Trump put his in and they’re still there, then Biden doubled some of the ones on EV components.”

Klein added that tariffs could cause consumers to pay more.

Economists agree that the inflationary impact of tariffs can depend on how consumers react to higher import prices.

On Thursday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned that proposals for sweeping tariffs are “deeply misguided,” and would ramp up inflation and hurt American businesses.

According to the Tax Foundation, when Trump was in office, he implemented tariffs on about $380 billion worth of goods imported into the U.S. The Biden-Harris administration has kept most of those tariffs in place.

In a new analysis , the Tax Policy Center finds the cost of the proposed tariffs would fall particularly hard on states in the Midwest and South, where imports typically take up a larger share of the state’s gross domestic product.