The Biden administration will keep existing tariffs in place for now on some European wines, cheeses, and other foods, despite complaints by food-industry trade groups that the levies are raising costs for restaurants and consumers.
The 25-percent tariffs were imposed on $7.5 billion worth of Europe’s goods in late 2019 by the Trump administration to pressure Europe in a 17-years-long dispute over subsidies for commercial aircraft makers Airbus and Boeing.
Europe retaliated by slapping tariffs on U.S. nuts, tobacco, and whiskey worth $4.5 billion, after which Trump broadened his tariff to include all French and German wines.
The Biden administration is “considering the action” as part of its broader review of Trump-era trade policies, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative wrote in a regulatory filing.
“These tariffs are impacting one of the most vulnerable sections of the economy at the worst point in generations,” Ben Aneff, president of the U.S. Wine Trade Alliance, said in a comment quoted by the Wall Street Journal.
TRENDPOST: We note this tariff report to illustrate the hypocrisy of not only the Presstitute media, which hardly reported on this, but also the business media and the general public that had attacked former President Trump for imposing the tariffs.
They loudly complained that his trade policies were endangering both trade and equity markets… but now remain nearly silent as they are being re-imposed by President Biden.
Again, we are political atheists and do not take sides. We identify, analyze, and forecast the current events forming future trends for what they are and not for what we want them to be.
We also maintain our forecast that considering those who now occupy the White House, the Biden administration is essentially Obama 2.0. Thus, to forecast the future of what policies Washington will impose and the direction it will lead the nation, is to look back to the past to see what the Obama administration had done.
TRENDPOST: Keeping the Obama spirit alive and thriving in the White House, Gary Gensler, former chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from 2009 to 2014, was nominated by President Biden to head the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
A blue-blooded member of the D.C. swamp during the Clinton Administration, Gensler served as Under Secretary of the Treasury for Domestic Finance (1999–2001) and assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Financial Markets (1997–1999).
While he struck out serving as CFO for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, the former Goldman Sachs executive has a reported net worth of between $41 and $119 million, according to his financial disclosure forms filed with the Office of Government Ethics.
