tar·iff

/ˈterəf/

noun

• a tax or duty to be paid on a particular class of imports or exports.
  “the reduction of trade barriers and import tariffs”

On February 1st, 2025, President Donald Trump issued a number of orders, placing a 25% tariff on Canada and Mexico. There’s been a lot of misinformation and disinformation regarding the Tariffs, and this article is designated to clear those up.

Tariffs often incentivize companies to use american-made products and goods, which provides jobs for Americans.

Now, Tariffs sound fairly positive in this context. However, it’s important to know that the United States has historically supported free trade, and that sudden tariffs can and will inflate prices, although it’s been promised they’ll be temporary.

According to the whitehouse.gov, President Trump is issuing these tariffs in response to the ongoing fentanyl crisis coming from Canada and Mexico. Unless the countries vow to address the ongoing crisis the tariffs would continue. Some time later, after Mexico and Canada issued their own retaliatory tariffs. Both nations reached an Agreement with the US and the tariffs have been lifted.

However, this is not where it ends.

On Monday, President Trump issued a 25% tariff on all imported steel and aluminum. Due to these, you could see the price of aluminum foil or aluminium related products go up, and the cost of production of infrastructure may increase as well.

On April 19th, President Trump issued a long list of brand new tariffs on different nations. On nearly all nations we do trade with, tariffs were applied. 

An abridged list includes

A 34% tariff on China

A 20% tariff on the European Union

A 32% tariff on Vietnam

And 24% in Japan.

Many have criticized the new tariffs, and the New York Stock Exchange crashed twice after they were put in effect.

Many people were left wondering how they came up with this number, below is the formula they used.

Now, this may look very confusing, but it can be simplified easily.

Now if you look on the bottom right of the solution, you’ll see two greek letters cancelling each other out. They serve no purpose in the equation and are only there so it looks like the equation makes sense. However, many economists disagree.

We spoke to Ken Greenberg, Economist, Certified Public Accountant and Saugus resident,

When asked what this will mean for the average consumer he replied;

“The average consumer will most likely pay higher prices and can cause inflation”

Adding, “When sellers of merchandise have to pay a higher price to bring in the product…. Then they’re gonna pass that along to the buyer”

We thank Mr. Greenberg for his input.