Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be increasingly sunny with a high of 72. Sunrise is 5:58 and sunset is 7:47, for 13 hours, 49 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 14.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1704, the first regular newspaper in British Colonial America, The Boston News-Letter, begins publishing.

Tariffs are taxes. The loudest voices¹ in Whitewater claiming an anti-tax position are also those who supported the man now responsible for what amounts to the largest American tax increase in over a generation. Trump’s imposition of tariffs will cause significant hardship to Wisconsin’s economy:

“That whipsawing back and forth, that creates a tremendous amount of uncertainty,” said  Steven Deller, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who researches the state’s agricultural and manufacturing economy. “And one thing that the economy hates is uncertainty.” 

….

First Trump added “national emergency” tariffs ranging from 10% to 25% on imports from China, Canada and Mexico. After adjusting those tariffs several times, he announced on April 2 a baseline 10% tariff on goods from all countries that export to the U.S., along with higher “reciprocal” tariffs on countries with which the U.S. has trade deficits — a move that set the stock market plunging. Trump paused most reciprocal tariffs days later. 

As it stands, most Chinese imports face tariffs of 145%, while Canada and Mexico face 25% tariffs, along with 10% for most everyone else.

….

Wisconsin imported more than $38 billion in goods last year, about half from countries facing the highest Trump tariffs: China, Canada and Mexico.

Machinery and electronic products made up about one-third of Wisconsin’s total import value last year. Pharmaceutical products, some of which Trump has since spared from tariffs, made up 12%.

….

Deller calls tariffs a regressive tax because they most affect people with lower income.

“They tend to spend their money more on goods than services,” he said. “They’re more likely to shop at a Walmart or a Dollar General-type store, and a lot of the goods that are sold in those kinds of stores come from international markets.”

See Khushboo Rathore, DataWatch: Trump’s tariffs and Wisconsin’s economy, Wisconsin Watch, April 21, 2025.

See also Tariffs Will Make Wisconsin’s Manufacturing Decline Harder to Reverse, Farmers, Farmers, Part 2 (Slogans and Reality), and The Anti-Tax Crowd Backed a Taxman.

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1. No one has mucked up public policy in the city more than these special-interest gentlemen. If across an entire football field, a chihuahua relieved itself in one small spot, that’s exactly where these men would step. ↩︎

Jeff Bezos’s latest publicity stunt rocket trip has met with widespread ridicule. Gayle King tried to defend the trip, but Alfred “Fredo” Thomas III (always sharp) makes quick work of her defense: