Trump’s Tariffs: Another Disaster for the Families Who’ve Lost Everything

His one-two punch of deportations and duties will make recovery slower—and way pricier.

Rubble left behind by the Palisades Fire in Los Angeles, January 12, 2024.Noah Berger/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

President Donald Trump announced punitive tariffs Saturday on American allies and rivals—25 percent on imported goods from Canada and Mexico and 10 percent on Chinese imports in addition to any preexisting tariffs—a move the Wall Street Journal‘s conservative editorial board deemed “the dumbest trade war in history.” Energy products from Canada were assigned a lower duty of 10 percent. We don’t yet know exactly how the targeted countries will respond, but the expert consensus is that the tariffs will drive up prices for American companies and, in turn, consumers.

That’s particularly unwelcome news for the Floridians and North Carolinians whose homes and businesses were damaged or destroyed by Hurricanes Milton and Helena, the thousands of Los Angelenos who lost everything in the recent fires, and any American community, now or in the near future, that is compelled to rebuild in the face of ever more frequent and destructive climate-change-driven disasters.

Trump’s tariffs will “fan the flames of the already challenging environment that Californians face in recovering from the LA fires,” says Ann Harrison, an economist at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business who specializes in international trade. “A tariff of 25 percent levied on foreign imports would likely be paid by domestic California businesses and residents consuming lumber, food, cement, plastics, and other necessities. If the tariffs are passed through to importers of these goods, then rebuilding homes could be much more expensive.”

Consider the vulnerabilities: In 2022, according to visual data compiled by the Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC), Canada was the source of almost half of the roughly $35 billion worth of wood products imported into the United States, with China second.

OEC

The US imported nearly $3 billion worth of plastic building materials in 2022. Here’s where they came from:

OEC

What about the $2.3 billion worth of cement America imports? Turkey is the biggest source, but the runners up are Canada and Mexico.

OEC

It goes on like this. The majority of imported gravel and crushed stone is from Canada and Mexico. Nearly a quarter of imported bricks are supplied by China and Canada. The United States took in $43.2 billion worth of steel in 2022, and about 37 percent came from the three countries Trump is targeting.

OEC

As the Guardian‘s Nina Lakhani reported a few days ago, Trump’s deportation orders are already posing problems for communities stricken by fires and floods. Clearing toxic debris in a disaster’s wake is difficult and dangerous work, and with unemployment hovering around 4 percent, it’s hard to find people willing to do it. For better or worse, America depends on immigrants, often undocumented, for work that is low-paid and unpleasant, albeit essential.

At the best of times, the construction industry depends heavily on immigrants, from grunt laborers to contractors and skilled tradespeople, including carpenters electricians, landscapers, masons, plumbers, roofers, tilers, and welders. In some states, including California and Florida, an estimated 40 percent of construction industry workers are immigrants. Some have green cards, legal work permits, or, until last week, temporary deportation protections—which President Biden granted but Trump has since rejected. Others are in the United States illegally and are therefore at the mercy of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

As the administration pursues its deportation agenda, which experts predict will be economically destructive, even legal immigrants will be reticent to make themselves vulnerable to getting swept up in ICE raids. Any worker fearful of la migra may well choose to avoid disaster recovery zones, lest those areas prove too tempting a target for immigration enforcement.

Any labor shortages that result from deportations, or the fear of deportation, will inevitably slow the pace of recovery and drive up the costs. The double-whammy of deportations and tariffs could prove devastating for recovery efforts. “Trump’s tariffs are insane, not to put it into too-technical language. And the timing couldn’t be worse,” says Joseph Stiglitz, a prominent economist at Columbia University who was awarded the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize for economics.

“Combined with labor shortages that may arise from his immigration policies, they are even worse. And with the climate-related disasters, such as the wildfires in LA, there will be an even greater need both for construction workers and materials. Like it or not, we are heavily dependent on both from outside our borders, and changing that can’t occur overnight.” 

This article was updated with details of Saturday’s White House announcement.

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate