When former President Trump was in power, he would often say we should manufacture things in America and one method to encourage that was to impose tariffs on goods made outside of America. Countries around the world have been trying to ensure tariffs are balanced enough to encourage some manufacturing in their home country and importing from lower wage countries every since countries were formed.

There is no perfect solution and you can think about the industrial revolution was inexpensive cotton from America going to the UK to run the textile factories which sent cloth back to the US. That was replaced by India and now the great textile factories are in China. It takes time for the movement to take place but tariffs played a factor in the investment decisions.

In an article from Reuters, the US government is trying to fight inflation and one of the solutions is to to lift some of the tariffs on China that were place by former President Trump. The tariffs include household goods, bicycles. If the tariffs are lowered, the prices in the store should be less and consumers dollars will stretch a little more. One has to believe the tariffs imposed by Trump did not lead to greater manufacturing in the US or few would object to the lowering of the tariffs.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, every country in the world worries about their manufacturing base and would like things made in the country, some make it very easy others harder. Then the government changes and rules and regulations change, it is one of the concerns with non domestic sales of goods and services. If the company you have investments in, how does it handle changes in governments?

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.