Wild And Unprecedented Price Fluctuations Are Causing Financial Chaos For U.S. Businesses
Michael Snyder
TheEconomicCollapseBlog.com
July 26, 2018
In every war there is a high price to pay, and this trade war will not be any different. The normal flow of goods and services around the globe is being severely disrupted, and even though this trade war has barely just begun, it is already having an enormous impact on the U.S. economy. Even if we ultimately win this trade war and the Trump administration is able to achieve all of the goals that it is targeting, there will still be a great cost in the short-term. We are going to see businesses fail, we are going to see workers get laid off, and global economic activity will inevitably contract. Heck, at this point even Fox News is calling this trade war “economic suicide”. We live at a time when a delicately balanced formula of economic factors allows us to live a debt-fueled standard of living that is far beyond what we actually deserve. Now we are messing with that formula, and the consequences are likely to be far more severe than most Americans are anticipating.
Let’s start by talking about steel and aluminum. One of the chief goals of the tariffs was to help the steel and aluminum industries, and thanks to those tariffs we have seen the price of U.S. steel rise 36 percent since the beginning of 2018…
For instance, US steel and aluminum prices have soared since the imposition of tariffs. US midwest hot-rolled coil steel price, the US steel price benchmark, soared 36% between the start of the year and the start of July. This in turn causes prices of goods made with the metal to rise.
That is good news for the U.S. economy, right?
Actually, it isn’t.
Every product that uses steel and aluminum is now going to cost more.
In many cases, a lot more.
For instance, one grill company is reporting that they have had to raise prices “by almost $350 per grill”…
Middleby Residential, a California-based company that makes Lynx grills, told the Dallas Morning News that even though the company uses US steel, the recent price pressures have driven up costs by almost $350 per grill.
Do you want to pay an extra $350 for your next grill?
Retail prices for washer and dryers are surging as well. They have increased by 20 percent compared to a year ago, and that is because prices for raw materials are skyrocketing…
Whirlpool Corp trimmed its full-year profit outlook as it booked a large charge on its European operations and said it wouldn’t be able to offset the effect of steel tariffs with higher prices for consumers.
The company said Monday it now expects to pay about $350 million more this year from rising raw-material costs as it faces “a very challenging cost environment.”
The Rest…HERE
