They Don’t Come Back!

One thing that we have learned from Trump’s “Tariff Yo-Yo” is that they don’t come back! Businesses find other suppliers.

Trump accuses Canada of wanting ‘benefits of being a State, without being one’ amid trade war

The Hill

by Tara Suter

08/23/26

President Trump on Sunday claimed that Canada desires the “benefits of being a state, without being one” amid trade tensions between the U.S. and its northern neighbor.

“Canada wants the benefits of being a State, without being one!!! They have also charged our great farmers, for many years, massive amounts of Tariffs. No more!!!” the president said in an early morning Truth Social post.

On Saturday, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said that his country would implement retaliatory tariffs on the U.S. starting on Sep. 8, responding to the Trump administration’s new 50 percent tariffs, which just went into effect.

During a press conference, Carney said that Canada would “match Washington’s new tariffs dollar for dollar in order to protect Canadian workers, farmers, families and businesses.”

But it is much more than the tariffs… once businesses find another supplier, they don’t come back! Trump isn’t just shooting himself in the foot; he is doing it to the whole nation! The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) writes:

We use the 2018-2019 U.S. trade war to examine how supply chains adjustments to a tariff cost shock affect imports and exports. Using confidential firm-trade linked data, we show that the decline in imports of tariffed goods was driven by discontinuations of U.S. buyer–foreign supplier relationships, reduced formation of new relationships, and exits by U.S. firms from import markets altogether. However, tariffed products where imports were concentrated in fewer suppliers had a smaller decline in import growth. We then construct measures of export exposure to import tariffs by linking tariffs paid by importing firms to their exported products. We find that the most exposed products had lower exports in 2018-2019, with most of the impact occurring in 2019.

A tariff doesn't necessarily cause a business to bring production home. It can cause the business to find a different foreign supplier. And once the new supply chain is established, lowering the tariff doesn't necessarily undo that decision.

They don’t come back! Think about it. If you are having problems with Supplier A and now you are doing business with Supplier B… would you go back to Supplier A?

Trump is doing what Trump does best... wreck things. What a loser... but sadly he is the head of our country.

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