20% Import Tarrifs!?

[TeryT]

on our beloved 4Runners, because they are made in Japan? If this is so, it would mean that the true 4Runner price range would be from around $20 for a base Runner.

No one in their right mind would be buying an Explorer or Jeep if this was the 4Runner's price!

It's a little scarey to think that this is what Detroit would be truly up against if the tarrifs were lifted. They think it's bad now, but this would be a real meat-grinder - if the government wasn't protecting them! I'm all for free trade & free markets, but this really puts that principle to the test. YIKES! :awais: :whipping2 :sobbing:

(BTW - what happened to the "gay" smiley? I think I was the 1st to use it, and was trying to figure out more uses for it - but probably not too PC.) :gay:

UPDATE: Actually reading that the tarriff is 25% - wow! This just proves it's true what Deming taught the Japanese - building in quality does make a product cheaper. Can you imagine that awesome value of the 4Runner for a true retail cost of $20,000!? No one could come close, and Toyota just keeps getting better.

Deming & his 14 points are fully vindicated & verified in my book.

Cato tarriff article

 

[TeryT]

Here's some other info

Politics are involved, too. We had--and still have--a 25% duty on imported trucks. When the Japanese started shipping small pickup trucks here decades ago, they called them "truck parts" to avoid that 25% truck tariff. Since the U.S. needed Japan in the anticommunist bloc, Treasury looked the other way.

Eventually Volkswagen (otc: VLKAY - news - people ) began building pickup trucks in the U.S. and sued to make the Japanese pay the truck tariff. Treasury capitulated immediately and applied the duty beginning in 1979. The Japanese answered by shifting the truck production to the U.S. The shell game still goes on. Our government calls sport utility vehicles "trucks," so that 25% tariff could rightfully apply. But the government agreed that for tariff purposes only, the SUVs would be cars and not trucks.

So it looks like SUVs don't get hit with this after all!

Forbes.com article