Dear Friend,
In case you missed it, President Trump enacted new 25% tariffs against Mexico and Canada earlier this week. These broad, across-the-board tariffs are a tax on imported goods that come across either border.
The most important thing to understand is that, unlike what President Trump says, this tax is NOT paid by Mexico or Canada, but instead falls on the American business that imports the goods. More often than not, these American businesses won’t absorb the cost of this tax; instead, they’ll pass it on to you in the form of higher prices.
These tariffs will lead to price jumps in every part of your life. Rent and housing prices will go up because Trump’s tariffs will make lumber, steel, and aluminum more expensive. In San Diego, the price of gas could go up anywhere from 9 to 20 cents per gallon because we import so much from Canada. Groceries will go up because a lot of our food, especially produce, is grown in Mexico.
For many small businesses in San Diego and across our country, raising prices won’t be enough to cover these 25% import taxes. Kianna Shlemon (who was my guest at Trump’s joint address to Congress this week) told me that her family restaurants could lose 30% of profits because of Trump’s tariffs.
Click here to hear Kianna talk about how tariffs will impact her.
Small businesses in our community will close their doors and you will pay more for so many things just because Donald Trump wants to look “tough.”
But Democrats in Congress are fighting back. We only need THREE Republicans to join us to stop these tariffs. We’re going to ramp up the public pressure and continue shining a light on how these tariffs will hurt people until we get the votes to roll them back.
If you have a personal story about how these tariffs or any of Trump’s other actions are impacting you, please share them with my office. Your stories will help me continue to make the case against this Administration.
