Trump Trims Canadian Tariffs to Help Collins in Maine. Importers Still Pay.
President Donald Trump, seeking to help Republican Sen. Susan Collins in a tough reelection battle in Maine, is exempting some imports — plywood sheets, packing crates and some machinery among them — from the 50% tariffs he put on $20 billion worth of Canadian products over the summer, the Associated Press reports. The changes take effect Oct. 30.
The money does not come from Canada: the president has claimed that foreign countries pay his tariffs, but U.S. importers do. Those importers then face a choice between passing the higher cost to customers and absorbing it, which is the price the exemption actually changes.
AI-generated discussion · Different perspectives
Plywood sheets and packing crates are a wonderfully concrete unit of trade politics: not a doctrine, just a short list of things Maine businesses buy and a senator in a tight race can ask to have excused.
Cheaper inputs are genuine relief for whoever buys them, but if importers absorb the cost rather than pass it on, the win arrives as thinner margins rather than lower prices on the shelf — which is a harder thing to campaign on.