Hey, did you hear there's a trade deal with Japan?

Yeah, we've had one for years.

From American public media.

This is Marketplace.

I'm Kyle Rizdahl Wednesday, today, July 23.

Good as always to have you along, everybody.

It has perhaps escaped the president's notice.

But with all the news of a trade deal with Japan the past day or so, I am obliged to point out here that back in 2019, President Trump's own first-term trade representative, Robert Lightheiser, was his name.

He signed an actual trade agreement with Japan, an agreement that ran 169 pages all in, and as a result of which the effective tariff rate on Japanese goods coming into this economy was one and a half percent. Thanks to our

friends at the Yale Budget Lab for that analysis. The deal that President Trump says he has

struck with Japan announced on his social

media, so details are scant, it will have American consumers paying a 15% tax on Japanese imports.

So more, 10 times more. The White House says, among other things, that these tariffs will support American

manufacturing, making imports more expensive, their logic goes, incentivizes domestic production.

But as Marketplace's Justin Ho reports to get us going today, the tariffs might be having the

opposite effect when it comes to getting manufacturing back on American shores.

U.S. manufacturers already have a hard time competing with many foreign manufacturers.

Because of the cost and availability of labor, first of all.

Erin McLaughlin, senior economist at the conference board, says building factories and supply chains can be more expensive in the U.S. too.

And then you add tariffs into the mix.

So any U.S. manufacturer that needs to import components from other countries will now be paying

tariffs on those components.

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