• tal
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    14 hours ago

    They aren’t, though specifically for groceries, it’s somewhat-less relevant for the US than Canada, because we produce a wider variety of food domestically.

    There are some important things that we do import, which have been discussed on here, like out-of-season fruits and vegetables.

    kagis

    These guys highlight several fields:

    https://www.eatingwell.com/foods-impacted-by-new-tariffs-11712453

    • Tropical Produce — the US consumes more than it has tropical regions to grow tropical foods in.

    • Seafood

    • Coffee

    • Olive Oil, which we mostly get from Europe. “The U.S. produces only 2% of the olive oil that it consumes”

    • Chocolate

    • Nuts (though IIRC we’re a major producer of some important nuts, like almonds and peanuts).

    Also, the foods that we’re especially competitive in tend to be bulk, low-value stuff, grains and such, which is the staple stuff that you’d really need if prices went up. We tend to import stuff like luxury food from Europe, which is nice but something that one could live without if one’s budget was tight.

    One impact will come from fertilizer, which we import a lot of; that’ll drive up our cost of production of food.

    The fact that we’re a major exporter of food is actually a major reason why you’d expect the agriculture industry to be unhappy with Trump, though agricultural states tended to vote for him. American agriculture is, by-and-large, globally-competitive. If it were uncompetitive, then tariffs might benefit it, providing useful protection from competition by forcing American consumers to buy it rather than more-competitive foreign products. And despite the lack of benefit, the agriculture industry likely does get hit by countertariffs.

    The industries that will tend to benefit from tariffs are those where America isn’t very globally-competitive in 2025, maybe low-skill, labor-intensive manufacturing, and that’s where consumers are going to take a price hit from taxation. Clothing prices, for example. We’re not very good at hand-producing clothing. Tariffs will cause those industries to be subsidized by transferring money from the industries that we’re better at.

    • PsychoNaut@lemmy.ml
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      14 hours ago

      Your statement is only accurate if tire exclusively talking about the food being imported. American fertilizer ingredients and a lot of the equipment (or materials for the equipment) come from Canada and other countries hit by the tariffs. There was an article a month ago about how the Vermont maple syrup industry is totally screwed because all their equipment comes from Canada.

      • tal
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        14 hours ago

        Yeah, I don’t know if you saw it before you commented, but I did update my comment to include a mention of fertilizer.