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First, the Wall Street Journal warned that tariffs would prevent the working class from buying $64,000 SUVs. Then Axios warned about the impact on French wine. Now, even more horrifyingly, behold the impact on… Italian pasta.
Your favorite Italian-origin fusilli and macaroni are poised to disappear from U.S. supermarket shelves.
Italy’s biggest pasta exporters say import and antidumping duties totaling 107% on their pasta brands will make doing business in America too costly and are preparing to pull out of U.S. stores as soon as January. The combined tariffs are among the steepest faced by any product targeted by the Trump administration.
“It’s an incredibly important market for us,” said Giuseppe Ferro, La Molisana’s chief executive, whose family-run pasta factory sits on the edge of the southern Italian town of Campobasso. “But no one has those kinds of margins,” he said, shaking his head as the sweet, nutty smell of freshly ground wheat berries permeated his factory.
The U.S. Commerce Department has announced a 92% antidumping duty on pasta made in Italy by La Molisana and 12 other companies, which import the bulk of pasta from Italy to the U.S. That is on top of the Trump administration’s 15% tariff on imports from the European Union.
Personally, I just buy the store brand or Barilla pasta, which is an Italian company, but whose products are usually made in America, depending on which is cheaper because we’re still living in the Biden economy. La Molisana pasta appears to be on the pricier side. I’m sure there are pasta lovers who want the real thing, at any price, but apparently not any price.
And the media keeps running stories about the tragedy of pasta producers who are all homespun folks making pasta with their hands while children play in the background with Don Corleone reclining in his rocking chair and sipping lemonade. It takes a lot to make the media love businessman, but the “lot” here is hating Trump.
“It’s a real pity,” laments Antonio Rummo of Donald Trump’s latest target in his ever-evolving tariff war: Italian pasta. Rummo is the sixth-generation grandson of the founder of Pasta Rummo, who opened a wheat mill in Benevento in southern Italy in 1846, using the family’s three horses to lug grain from the surrounding Campania region and Puglia to produce fresh pasta.
And they still make it with three horses too.
What the media isn’t telling you (shocking, I know, the idea that the media might leave something out, next thing you know Tucker will bring on an insane celebrity, cut all the footage of him being insane and then insist that “they” are trying to make you believe he’s insane, shortly before said celebrity shows up in a ski mask, anyway back to Italian pasta) is that the Commerce Department accused those companies (and their three horses) of violations.
La Molisana is actually considered one of the biggest Italian exporters and Commerce accused it of providing misleading information.
You can see the official findings here. And you can even imagine the “sweet, nutty smell of freshly ground wheat berries permeating” the paper while you read it.
Contrary to the media freakout…
1. Imposing punitive duties on Italian imported pasta is not likely to impact the average American consumer
2. This is a temporary measure to force compliance
3. The Europeans do this to us too
… but between the $64,000 SUVs, the French wine and the imported Italian pasta, how is a Democrat ‘public servant’ supposed to survive?
Tariffs need to be reduced to zero yesterday!
Mr Greenfield, tariffs are just another tax on top of all the other taxes we pay. How can a conservative on an online conservative magazine be pushing for tax increases is mind boggling!
But you somehow think tariffs are a ‘magic tax’ lol! They actually are a horrible tax. Tariffs and Trump’s foolish protectionist policies are just a form of government central economic planning.
“3. The Europeans do this to us too”
Wrong. The Europeans do it to themselves. Tariffs imposed by Europe on imports are paid for by the Europeans. To match that and tax ourselves more would be absolutely foolish as the trade deficit is meaningless.
Look it up! Trump recently said the price of everything is down. If you believe that, please contact me about some ocean-front property I’m selling in Kansas.
Ask someone the minimum amount you would have to pay them to get them to mow your lawn. Say the answer is $25. The government then imposes a $10 per-lawn-mowed tax on the supplier of the service. What is the minimum they’d now have to get from you for them to still be willing to mow your lawn? The answer is $35. Some people–me!–would mow my own lawn rather than pay $35.
President Trump has argued interest rates should be much lower. How do you get lower rates? Increase the money supply. Hmmm, what did rapid expansion of the money supply do to inflation when Biden and Yellen were running the show and what has subsequently happened to interest rates?
Adam Smith pointed out the idiocy of tariffs back in 1776, with an exception for national defense. C’mon! If you have a sense of humor, you should find it funny that taxing lumber coming in from Canada is a national security issue. Hmmm, what do higher lumber prices do to home construction costs? What do higher construction costs do to home prices?
The President calling people “fools” is going to backfire. The last thing this country needs is another Democrat POTUS with a Democrat-majority House and Senate. This president looks like he’s going to “blue it” once again.
I have a trade deficit with every business I patronize as those businesses buy nothing from me. Am I worse off as a result?
President Trump says he wants more investment in the U.S. I am still waiting for someone to explain how foreigners can get the U.S. dollars they need to do that investment if they do not run a trade surplus with the U.S. Running a capital account surplus is necessary to get that investment.
” I’m so old, I can remember when Republicans supported a balanced budget. See “Contract with America.”
So, for esample, when the Canadian government subsidizes its lumber industry to the tune of $1,200,000,000.00 dollars anually so it can send lumber into America at prices lower than American lumber companies can compete with, resulting in shut-down mills and timber operations, destroying jobs and turning once prosperous American communities into ghost towns, that’s a good thing because Adam Smith said so three hundred years ago. Or when China uses slave or near-slave labor to produce products, many of which it has literally stolen from American companies and ships those products here nearly free of import duties, preventing American companies from competing due to wage differentials, labor unions, government regulations and all the rest, that’s just fine and we shouldn’t do anything to raise barriers to such practices? When will people understand that there is no “free trade.” All countries engage in subsidization/tarriffs, most far more than Trump has done.
Whose money does the Canadian government use so that Canadian wood will be cheaper? If it were subsidized so much that they just gave us the wood ,would Americans be worse off? Who would be paying for the wood then? The author admits buying what’s cheapest. Tariffs prevent us from doing exactly that.
Your failure to address Trump’s blatant lie that the price of everything is down is telling. C’mon, anyone with an IQ above that of a paper clip should acknowledge it is incredibly stupid.
It isn’t as if this hasn’t been studied ad nauseum. Tons of studies show the incredible cost of protecting one steel job in the U.S. That Trump is reduced to blatantly lying about obvious facts is also telling.
The Canadian ad featuring Ronald Reagan was brilliant. That Trump’s response was to increase tariffs on Canada was worse than childish. I was waiting for him to say “and you’re not allowed in my yard anymore.”
If Trump ends up “bluing” it again, we can expect the usual lame assertions that the elections were stolen.
Trump wants foreign investment in the U.S. Maybe you will educate readers as to where they can get the U.S. dollars needed if they don’t run a trade surplus, i.e. have a capital account deficit, with the U.S. Maybe not.
“The Canadian ad featuring Ronald Reagan was brilliant.” A brilliant lie. It was taken out of context and selectively edited from the entire speech but when you are a leftist who cares about facts/truth.
When the Canadian government subsidizes lumber to export to the US, they are hurting themselves. They use Canadian tax money so importers can get cheaper lumber. The one getting hosed is the Canadian taxpayer.
Free trade is unilateral. If our gov let’s us trade freely with no tariffs , then we have free trade. When we have a fool like Trump charge us tariffs, then we don’t have free trade. Under Trump we have ‘managed’ trade or ‘protectionism’.
When we get discounted lumber say from Canada, we’d be foolish not to accept. And we would except short of the long arm of gov(Trump in this case) stopping us.
That dumping hurts us is a huge protectionist myth. Dumping rarely works to run others out of business and when it does, it helps us with cheaper goods , thus making us wealthier.
You my friend have bought into all the protectionist myths.
Trump is completely clueless when it comes to real world macro economics. He is lost in his protectionist fantasy thinking.
And you are correct. Artificially lower interest rates will just increase the amount of fiat money circulating in the economy.
The capital surplus account mirrors the trade deficit. Too bad there is no knowledge of real world economics required in order to run for president.
For 50 years the U.S. has had a trade deficit, what has happened to real wages during that time? Silence!
You will notice not one Always Trumper has explained how foreigners can get the U.S. dollars they need to invest in the U.S. if there is not trade deficit. Silence!
You will notice not one addressed Trump’s laughable assertion that all prices are down. Silence!
When your write “[t]he capital surplus account mirrors the trade deficit,” I suspect most readers here have zero clue why that is so,
I did appreciate that the author chooses, and I quote “depending on which is cheaper.” Hmmm, Always Trumpers, what was Trump’s justification for allowing more Argentinian beef imports? To bring prices down. Silence!
I the idea here is to make some improvement to the trade deficit. Who cares say you. Well , people who want to rebuild American manufacturing .that’s who. People who want to see a prosperous middle class. People who don’t want to see this country reduced to elite s and the lower classes, a condition from which all civilizations have collapsed .
The trade deficit is meaningless. We shouldn’t care. You want to rebuild American manufacturing so we can pay higher prices for goods and reduce our standard of living?
All Trump’s protectionist schemes will do is make us less wealthy.
Tariffs and protectionism are just a form of economic central planning. You want more central planning and less free market here in the US? You think that will make us better off?
I wish Trump would fight to reduce the budget deficit the way he obsesses over reducing the completely meaningless ‘trade deficit’.
I hope SCOTUS rules against Trump. Then perhaps we can end these foolish tariffs once and for all!
End this tariff lunacy.
Right, make them zero when every other country does like wise. The owner of the pasta company said “But no one has those kinds of margins,” The US has market has had to deal with those margins for decades. Don’t like tariffs? Buy American made.
“Don’t like tariffs? Buy American made.”
So your’e saying, “Act like the government wants you to, and we’ll tax a bit less”.
Actually, it’s none of Trump’s or the government’s damn business if free Americans choose to buy import o American made.
Ron or Rand Paul Libertarians?
Please tell me it’s not the same three horses.
I hope they don’t make balsamic vinegar too expensive.
They’re in the Senate now
If you sit down for a hand of free trade with marked cards, you have either quit or play with the crooks on their terms and cheat. If your country is cheated by the tariffs and regulations of other nations, you cannot quit the world. You have to change the terms. Citing Adam Smith or Frederic Bastiat does not impress other nations and get a fair deal.
Some years back Australia had beef with Italian “premium” food products.
A whole raft of stuff, extra virgin olive oil, balsamic vinegar, tomato products, were being labelled as top of the line premium quality and were in fact very low quality, with the stuff being adulterated, food dye being used, etc.
All the companies doing it were from the south of Italy.
As northern Italians will tell you, Africa starts south of Rome.
Oh no! ALL of Italy’s pasta manufacturers are going to stop selling a product that costs near to noting to make to their largest customer.
In a pig’s ass. It’s an empty threat. None of those companies are going to take such a huge hit for the Italian government.
I eat America pasta and Italian and they taste THE SAME. And the Italian pasta makers employ immigrants, including undocumented ones and islamopithecines for cheap labor..
I would be perfectly satisfied with American past anyway. Abbondanza!
If you want to eat American pasta over imported, that is your business. But you can’t tell other Americans what to do or charge them with tariffs if they prefer imported pasta.
Who made you God?
Did I write that I preferred American pasta over Italian? I CLEARLY wrote that I don’t give a shit.
And I didn’t try to enforce my beliefs on “Americans.” I’ll leave that to you lefty scumbag fascists.
Only Italy can say if it exports pasta to America, you dumbfuck. Not that I care one way or another. Lie about losing money? Why should I or any other American care? I have a cupboard full of pasta, American and Italian. Do you?
Are you even American? I doubt it. Mind your own business, you foreign fucktard. Nobody here cares about your impotent mewlings. I piss on Italian pasta.
Mr Greenfield. I want to ask you an honest question if I may.
Have you always been a rabid protectionist, or did Trump brainwash you into it?
Have you always been a rabid anti-American or did Satan trick you into it?
I’m not anti American. Where did you get that, cause I want to allow Americans free trade and not burden them with Trump’s idiotic protectionist schemes?
So no , I’m not anti American, I just have more brains in my finger nail clippings than you do in your entire stupid head!