It's amazing. Even a topic as dry as tariffs gets the press's bias wheels turning. Here's one example, from Reuters:
Toyota Motor Corp said on Friday U.S. tariffs on imported steel and aluminum would substantially raise costs and therefore prices of cars and trucks sold in America.
"The (U.S.) Administration's decision to impose substantial steel and aluminum tariffs will adversely impact automakers, the automotive supplier community and consumers," the automaker told Reuters.
Toyota added that more than 90 percent of the steel and aluminum purchased for cars built in the United States is sourced from the country.
Substantially? In making this claim, somehow, the reporter did not ask Toyota what the substantial cost increase would be. I would think that would be a valuable piece of information, since the average price of a car or truck today is around $36,000. So I thought I would do some research to find what "substantial" means.
The current price of steel is around $800 per ton, and the price of aluminum is 97 cents per pound. The average car uses around one ton of steel and close to 400 pounds of aluminum. The average truck uses around one and one half tons of steel and just under 400 pounds of aluminum.
So if the price of the steel in a car went up the whole 25%, which it won't, and the price of aluminum went up the entire 10%, the cost would go up by about $240, or less than five tenths of a percent. The cost of a truck would go up around $340. According to Edmunds, the average car loan today is six and a half years. or 78 months, so the average payment would be up around $3 per month.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
