We will not sell out our country over chicken sandwiches
Jul 12, 2018, 6:56 AM
(File, KIRO 7)
We are now in a trade war. Fortunately, unless you’re a farmer, there hasn’t been much pain.
Not that I’m unsympathetic towards the farmers losing their Chinese soybean business because of China’s retaliation, but this is what farm country voted for. And sometimes you have to suffer now to prosper later, and if any group knows how to suffer, it’s the farmers.
Actually, China was so hot to buy soybeans before the deadline kicked in that soybean exports were way up last month. So the farmers should be fine.
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But I worry about the rest of us in non-farm country, living our coddled import-dependent lives. Because the list of stuff that will cost more under the president’s new import tariffs is almost 200 pages long!
The list includes refrigerators, auto parts, wool hats, frozen rabbit meat, bicycle speedometers, bidets, breaded eel, and bismuth — the key ingredient in Pepto Bismol — which a lot of us take every day now.
And as CBS’s Jill Schlesinger warned us, there’s one more thing.
“Tariffs could raise prices at Chick-fil-A simply by increasing the cost of a pressure cooker used by the restaurant,” she explained.
But you know what? We made it through the gas lines of the ‘70s. We made it through the iPhone shortage of 2017. We will not sell out our country over delicious chicken sandwiches.