Tariffs ahoy and trade wars
White Stilton, produced in Cropwell Bishop.
As I write this, the Trump era tariff wars are in full swing and the global stock markets are in freefall. I am still puzzled as to what part of America he’d like to make great again through this particular set of moves. Apparently, the billionaire short sellers and the bitcoin operators – they’ll be great while the rest of the country queues up for bread and petrol, while paying thousands for an iPhone and wondering how it all went so wrong. Bigly.
Elections, as a so very wise US DEC representative said during the first edition of this, have consequences. This representative probably no longer has a job because the bright sparks that now run the place like to fire any federal employee with any competence. Never mind – it is ever thus with tyrants. They wind up looking like a clown car, but unfortunately, it’s a malicious one. Suddenly, Americans feel like Russians must already do.
Dairy has long been the scapegoat for those who want to throw tariffs around. The EU complained about the US tariffs, and while having to deal with China’s investigations into EU-produced dairy products. Remember Airbus and Boeing? The EU dairy sector got dragged into that mess as well.
That being said, I want everyone who eats dairy and who makes it in their respective countries, to go and have that yogurt, ghee, butter, cheese, milk, kefir, labneh, or quark, and hold the domestically produced products close. They cannot put tariffs on products made and consumed locally in your country. While they may put tariffs on Bailey’s Irish cream in the US, we can enjoy it here, and in the EU.
It is a sad state of affairs, but as I always tell my child, this too shall pass away. Like the pandemic did. Stay safe and keep well all of you. Turn off the news, get outside and eat some cheese.
- Suzanne Christiansen, editor, Dairy Industries International.
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