On May 10th, 2019, President Donald Trump raised tariffs on Chinese imports from 10% to 25%.

When asked what a tariff is, Brenda Vanderzanden, an economics teacher, says it’s a tax on exports and imports from another country. Vanderzanden added that American companies might be threatened by the Chinese.

Vanderzanden says that these tariffs won’t benefit us; they will only raise prices for products in the long run.

When asked if there will be political consequences, Tiger Reimann, a freshman at YCHS, said, “This doesn’t really make a good relationship for China and America.” “They’re kinda going back and forth kinda getting ‘revenge’” Reimann said.

When asked how it will affect the rest of the world, Reimann replied, “China and America are both really really big ‘powerhouses’ in economics and manufacturing.” “If we get into military conflict, then the rest of the world will be affected by a world war”, Reimann said.

Reimann proceeded to say, “We do get a lot of things from China, from paper to, just a lot of products. As you notice, you flip over a product and it says ‘made in china’. I don’t know if it will necessarily benefit us, because I think they supply us with more products than we supply them with products, so I think it would actually hurt us more when they place tariffs.”

Vanderzanden believes that there are some good reasons for the tariffs being placed. But in the long run prices will go up, and farmers will begin to be affected by the increased taxes on exports. Farmers in the U.S., especially the Midwest, export large amounts of crops to China, where they lack them.

No one knows what will happen in the future with these tariffs, only time will tell us what will happen.