Last week, a long-established word was suddenly brought back into our everyday vocabulary. It’s spelled with one “r” and two “f’s” – tariff. Thankfully, we have spell-checker to make sure we got it right. That stimulated interest. How many times have we included the word “tariff” in The Weekly Commentary issues during the last 11 years? None – we ran a search on the past issues.
However, the news media has puffed-up its usage. Have they made too much of the steel tariff announcement? Probably, if history is a guide. We will continue to evaluate how tariffs affect you the consumer, business profits, and FED actions; but, we do not see an impact where we need to change your portfolio at this time.
By the way, tariffs were once the chief source of income for the U.S. Government before the passage of the Federal Income Tax legislation in 1913.