"We wanted this train to stay in Canada until the end of September or towards the middle of September because of storage, but the contractor changed gears because the new tariff was going to cause us to have to pay the manufacturer another tariff of $38,000," said Karen Adams, Merced Kiwanis President.
35% tariffs are set to go into effect on Friday on goods imported from Canada.
The Kiwanis Kiddieland received its ADA-accessible train on Wednesday. If they had waited any longer, the train would've been out of reach.
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"That was a game changer, it wasn't going to happen," said Adams. "So we had to do a fast track."
This week, President Donald Trump signed several executive orders imposing a 50% tariff on Brazil and 50% on certain copper products, and stated that India would have to pay a 25% reciprocal tariff.
Other countries, as well as groups like the European Union, scrambled to negotiate 15% rates.
Either way, we'll see changes at checkout.
"We'll see prices start to creep up," said Kyle Handley, Economics Professor, University of California, San Diego.
The president has vowed to stick to the August 1 deadline, after two previous tariff rollouts were pushed back, but that may not be up to him.
On Thursday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit heard arguments on whether the sweeping tariffs are lawful.
A small group of businesses and a coalition of states argued that the president overstepped his power when he implemented the rarely used International Emergency Economic Powers Act to put in place a flurry of tariffs in April.
In that hearing, it was argued that the act has never been used to impose tariffs.
"The authority for them is based on the president's emergency powers, and there's a court case pending on that, and the federal circuit could decide that he doesn't have those powers, in which case - he's not allowed to levy these tariffs," said Handley.
The U.S. and countries across the world are waiting for the appeals court judges to make their ruling to see if and when the tariffs could be imposed.
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