Trump tariffs: Long Islanders react to new import taxes on Canadian, Mexican and Chinese goods

Maryanne and Ed Snyder of East Meadow weigh in on the tariffs imposed Saturday. Credit: Howard Simmons
The tariffs imposed on Chinese, Mexican and Canadian goods by President Donald Trump could hike the prices for Long Islanders on products such as cars, tequila and avocados.
"It's a negotiation tool," said Ed Snyder, 66, who was out Saturday shopping with his wife, Maryanne, at the East Meadow Stew Leonard’s grocery store. "It makes prices go up, but it brings other governments to heel."
Trump signed executive orders Saturday imposing an import tax on products coming from Mexico, Canada and China. While China was hit with a 10% tariff, the other countries will have to pay a 25% tax on all the goods they send into the United States — except for Canadian energy, which will get a 10% tariff.
The president has said that he planned to use tariffs as leverage against Canada and Mexico to get the countries’ leaders to crack down on illegal migration across the northern and southern borders. He also said he would levy the import tax against those countries and China unless they do more to halt the flow of deadly fentanyl into the United States. The three countries account for a third of the goods imported into this country.
The leaders of Mexico and Canada have signaled that they are willing to do more to control the shared border, but vowed swift reaction, including tariffs of their own on U.S. goods and products.
Critics like U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) have said that the tariffs will drive up costs for consumers and risk destabilizing the economy.
Schumer on Sunday cited a report from the Budget Lab at Yale University that estimated the tariffs could cost the average U.S. household as much as $1,200 a year.
John Costanzo, chief executive of the East Norwich-based global logistics company LDK, said he did not think the tariffs would last.
“He's a masterful negotiator,” Costanzo said of Trump. “He's gonna win some pretty significant [concessions] and get press coverage out of this, which is what I'm sure he wants as well.”
Costanzo said that Trump made similar promises to tax imports from Canada and Mexico during his first term in the White House, which resulted in their three-way trade deal being renegotiated to be more advantageous to the United States.
The tariffs could prompt some manufacturing to return to the United States, but Costanzo said it would not happen on a large scale. Many companies will rethink their supply chain to avoid increased costs from the tariffs, he said.
Costanzo said that he didn’t think the tariffs would remain if the countries agreed to some of the president’s demands.
“I don't see it lasting or changing the way we finance government,” he said.
Stocking up
Consumers have already been stretched thin by inflation and high food prices, and some shoppers interviewed at the East Meadow supermarket felt the tariffs would worsen the situation.
The chain’s owner, Stew Leonard Jr., told Newsday Saturday that he’s taken some measures to account for the tariffs but mostly he's taken a wait-and-see approach.
“We started stocking up on tequila because Mexico is the only place in the world that makes tequila," he said. "Then we sort of backed off a little bit because we didn't know exactly what was going to happen."
But he said he couldn’t do the same with avocados.
“As a retailer, there's nothing worse than having too many ripe avocados,” he said, so he hasn’t ramped up purchasing of them. “We just have our fingers crossed. I hope we're not going to see what happened to eggs, happen to avocados.”
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