25% Tariffs Begin (March 4, 2025)

The day has come, the mayhem has begun. Trump tried this method once before, to force Canada and Mexico to agree to a new NAFTA, only to back down when tariffs were reciprocated from those countries. While the signature ink was drying, Trump said that it was the best deal for the States.

After U.S. President Donald Trump took office in January 2017, he sought to replace NAFTA with a new agreement, beginning negotiations with Canada and Mexico. In September 2018, the United States, Mexico, and Canada reached an agreement to replace NAFTA with the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA), and all three countries had ratified it by March 2020. NAFTA remained in force until USMCA was implemented. In April 2020, Canada and Mexico notified the U.S. that they were ready to implement the agreement. The USMCA took effect on July 1, 2020, replacing NAFTA.

Wikipedia

So, no sooner does Trump get back into the White House, he decides that these two trading partners have been ‘stealing’ from America. To ‘punish’ them for that, he decided to slap a 25% tariff on all imported goods from them. That took effect at one minute past midnight today.

There is but one inconjunct, the rest are mainly sextiles and trines, with three squares and one opposition. Two of those squares form a T-square pointing at Jupiter, along with that opposition between the Sun and the Midheaven. The inconjunct explains the underlying reasons for Trump’s actions.

Venus Inconjunct Midheaven

You have a strong need to be loved and to love others as well, but this may create some problems in your life. You are afraid that if you appear to others as you really are, they won’t accept you.

You are likely to feel that there is a conflict between what you ought to do in a particular situation and what would be acceptable to the people around you. Later in life, you may see your job, career or profession as a part of your life that is quite separate from your personal relationships with loved ones. This may cause you to neglect one area in favor of the other, instead of trying to create a balance between them.

This same pattern of thinking may make you believe that you must sacrifice pleasure and enjoyment in order to achieve anything worthwhile in life. Here again you cannot afford to let either aspect of your life triumph over the other. Especially as you get older, you should make a conscious effort to find ways to enjoy yourself, be with your friends and loved ones and, at the same time, move toward your goals.

Planets in Youth (page 212) by Robert Hand (1977)

Trump’s intention is to reward his pals with tax cuts, in effect repaying them for their support. But the money has to come from somewhere. Tariffs look to be the instant solution. Unfortunately, the rest of the country will end up paying for those tax cuts by spending more for imported products. Of course, the upside is that manufacturing and production may increase to cover any shortfalls that occur for lack of materials like steel, aluminum and timber, but that will take years, and in the meantime, the financial markets will lose faith in his policies. They’re already beginning to see the “handwriting on the wall.”