Sinking the Trans-Pacific Partnership may have been popular with Trump's supporters, but it was not popular with cattle ranchers. They have been building herds for years and anticipated shipping beef products -- some of which are not exactly popular among American consumers -- to Japan as tariffs fell from 38.5 percent to just over 9 percent. Now that opportunity is gone. Instead, other cattle-producing nations like Australia will try to seize the Japanese market on a bilateral basis.
Last week, Texas ranchers shipped 1,430 cattle to Mexico, most to slaughter and to market. On an annual basis that's 74,000 head, part of a brisk two-way business that sees hundreds of thousands of Mexican cattle coming north to be fattened in Midwestern feed lots. But in the event of a trade war, all bets are off. A tariff here means retaliation by the Mexican government there, and the last time that happened, it was the United States that surrendered. In phasing in NAFTA in the early 2000s, Congress abruptly interrupted the movement of Mexican trucks north. The Mexicans retaliated with a crippling tariff on American tomato growers. The Republican Congress caved and today, Mexican trucks head north freely.
This was much needed. Several people called on him to do it, including Hillary Clinton in a tweet this morning. I think it's important to give Trump credit when he does something right.
