Imagine your son or daughter plays hockey. Things are financially tight, so you’re shopping around for affordable gear. Last year, a basic wooden hockey stick from a Canadian brand cost about $40. Now a 50% tariff is imposed. By the time the importer, distributor and retailer pass their costs down the line, that same “bargain” stick sells for around $60. Your family didn’t buy a better hockey stick. Canada didn’t suddenly become richer. You simply paid 20 bucks more for what is now the higher-priced “bargain” stick. That’s tariff policy in miniature. And it’s happening far beyond hockey sticks. Somewhere over the past several years, America drifted from a nation asking, “Do I want this?” to one asking, “Can I still afford this?” Generations accustomed to affordability now experience sticker shock almost everywhere. Groceries. Insurance. Medical care. Cars. Utilities. A trip to Costco. Increasingly, Americans aren’t deciding what they want. They’re deciding what they can still afford. Credit card debt is reaching record highs while savings are tumbling. For many Americans life has always been a struggle. But today, with pressures as varied as home insurance, medical costs, food, vehicles and fuel … we get the bills and are literally shocked at the increases we’re facing. Official inflation numbers feel hollow while many of the expenses families notice most — insurance premiums, groceries, repairs, housing and medical costs — have risen far faster than most people expected. Reading Andrew Ross Sorkin’s excellent “1929” reminded me that economic history often turns ugly when governments respond to hardship by making commerce more expensive. The infamous Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act raised U.S. tariffs on imported goods to some of the highest levels in our history. It was intended to protect American industry and agriculture. Instead, economists generally agree it provoked retaliation abroad, hurt American exports, hammered agricultural exports and deepened an already severe depression. That lesson feels remarkably relevant today. At a time when many Americans are already struggling with affordability, tariffs have returned as a central feature of economic policy. President Donald Trump has embraced them more aggressively than any recent president, arguing they strengthen America’s bargaining position and encourage domestic production. Sometimes tariffs do have a legitimate role in trade policy. But they also come with costs that are easy to overlook until consumers begin paying higher prices at the checkout counter. American companies and consumers paid close to $200 billion in tariffs since the start of Trump’s presidency until the Supreme Court ruled against most of them. That money didn’t simply disappear. It was absorbed by importers, passed through businesses and, eventually, reflected in the prices consumers paid. Last week, President Trump announced new tariffs on 60 countries while separately proposing 50% tariffs on many Canadian products, including hockey sticks, wine and other goods. Canada remains America’s largest trading partner, meaning higher import costs have the potential to ripple throughout the U.S. economy. When Americans are already pinched to or beyond capacity, it’s a bad time to pile on. Canada supplies goods and parts used in countless products made or sold in America, from cars and trucks down to hockey sticks. Supporters argue higher prices will encourage American manufacturers to build more hockey sticks here at home. Sometimes that can happen.  But just as often, domestic manufacturers recognize that imported sticks have become more expensive and quietly raise their own prices as well. Economists call this “price umbrella” behavior — when higher-priced imports give domestic competitors room to increase prices without losing customers. And with hockey sticks, your family has $20 less to spend somewhere else, and the country’s affordability problem just became a little worse. Aluminum tells a bigger, more troubling version of the same story. Canada supplies enormous amounts of aluminum used in American manufacturing. Tariffs increase the cost of everything from automobiles to beverage cans. Even small increases become enormous when multiplied across millions of purchases.  Americans may never notice the tariff itself, but they’ll notice the higher price. And so it goes with hundreds and thousands of other products … Admittedly, this oversimplifies very complex economics. The theory is that higher prices will eventually produce more American factories and more American jobs. So far, the evidence has been mixed. Manufacturing employment has remained relatively flat so far despite substantially higher tariffs. For now, the effect Americans are most likely to notice isn’t more factories. It’s higher prices. At a time when affordability is already front and center, that’s a difficult burden to add. The real political divide in America today may not be left versus right. It may be affordable versus unaffordable. Millions of Americans aren’t asking for luxuries. They’re asking for breathing room. They’re postponing doctor’s appointments, delaying vacations, hoping the washing machine survives another year and wondering whether they can afford the next increase in insurance, groceries or rent. Whatever our politics, that ought to be the first economic question every policy answers: Will this make life more affordable — or less? Because if the answer is “less,” then America doesn’t need another speech explaining why. It needs a different policy. Gary Horton is chairman of the College of the Canyons Foundation board. His “Full Speed to Port!” has appeared in The Signal since 2006. The opinions expressed in his column do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Signal or its editorial board. The post Gary Horton | Cross-Checked: Americans Fouled appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal. ...read more read less