Russia Riots Over Autos
Things aren’t looking too Christmas-like in Russia these days. The country is actually in the midst of large scale riots because, of all things:cars. It seems that the Russian government has taken it upon themselves to raise tariffs on used imported autos. The major target of these tariffs are Japanese autos. According to the AFP Russian president Putin sees no reason for concern:
“Putin confirmed Friday the government would not cancel its decision on tariffs, saying it would rather pay to ship Russian-assembled cars to the Far East than see its residents buy Japanese-made models.
The protests have been roundly dismissed by Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, a close ally of the former president. “Some kind of swindlers are provoking this,” he said, quoted in the Kommersant newspaper.”
Thus far 200 people have been detained from the riots which have grown in size to the thousands. These riots should serve as a really good lesson to governments that you should not fool around with tariffs. The Russian government thinks that by making foreign cars more expensive that they will be forcing citizens to buy cheaper, non-tariff domestic autos. While this effect will come about it will be at the expense of the Russian people who no must empty their pockets for an inferior product. Is this the return of communism? Simply put this is an underhanded iron fist stealing the economic freedom from the people of Russia. While the US has her own auto problems…do you see a tariff in our future?
This doesn’t have anything to do with Japan being an ally of the U.S. does it? I don’t see any tariffs on cars, I bet all taxes will go up (if the car industry doesn’t bail itself out). I think we will see taxes on everything, from water to food. Regards!