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26 Mistakes of Liberation Day Tariffs
No Passing Grade Here
Tariffs applied to penguins, military bases, and Iran. We’ve all been hearing the stories about the outlier insanity, but the randomness of which countries and territories are on or off the list, much like Musk’s cheeks, gets worse the closer you look.
The list is internally inconsistent in five categories related to authority, current trade agreements, and sanctions. For anyone with money after market crash last week, there are some misses to leverage as import loopholes.
Sanctions
There is been discussion of why is Russia not on the list and that could be attributed to not needing tariffs where trade is not allowed. This is why Cuba and North Korea are not listed; but then Iran, Syria, and Ukraine are listed. In some sense Ukraine only has sanctions on the parts that are occupied by Russia… which then begs the question of why not the whole of Russia?
Compact of Free Association Countries
The Compact of Free Association (COFA) countries have special relationships and agreements with the United States. Most of this is related to the U.S. bases that have been supporting the Pacific fleet since WWII. These islands have almost no exports to the US and can receive services like FEMA disaster…
