Schools, parents fear Trump, the war
Schools and parents are awaiting the effects of President Trump’s introductory war, for fear of the worst for the rise in the cost of food and school supplies.
This situation is fluid, as the president’s position has stopped for a period of 90 days on the mutual tariff for most countries, but it maintains a fixed rate of 10 percent for most foreign products at the present time. Based on imports from China, the trade war has already escalated to 145 percent of the tariff.
The war of inability to predict the status of school officials and parents in a difficult place with the fluctuation of the market and the economic uncertainty.
“This will certainly affect educational areas and states in several different ways,” said Karl Ritanos, a teacher and a former official, referring to everything from the cost of food to students to technology promotions that most schools had bought five years ago during the epidemic.
Trump, who has long argued that global markets dealt with the United States “very fairly”, began the process of placing the customs tariff after hours of assuming his post in January, and signing an executive order to put 25 percent on goods from Canada and Mexico.
In the coming weeks, it is announced and temporarily stopped from other definitions, including the closest commercial partners in America. While the markets are not kindly responded, the White House insists that the definitions bring rebel states to the bargaining table.
The struggle for schools is whether it will jump and buy things now if they believe that the economic situation will get worse or wait in the hope that it will improve.
“Let’s take, for example, technology budgets. As you know, it should [schools] Be refreshing? Should we buy quickly? Should we wait? What is a tariff? Will it be 145 percent, or will it be suspended? It is impossible to say. Therefore, there is a lot of confusion and deficiency of clarity about what they should do. ”
“Ninety percent of the budgets of educational areas go to capitalist expenditures, that is, the salaries of transportation and teachers for schools. Others are the place where they have to pay the price of the curricula and everything else: food bills, content, materials, etc., and so on, they will search for compensation for costs in those other areas.”
Last week, the markets decreased again after the Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell expected slower growth and higher prices throughout the year due to customs tariff policies. Powell’s predictions angered Trump, who threatened to launch him in a move that the Central Bank president argues illegal.
Not only does the battles be worried for schools, but also companies that they usually buy.
“Companies, for example, are either sellers or retailers in products that are imported from China, the changes in prices and customs tariff changes over the past two months really led to uncertainty about the final cost of schools,” said Sarah Chloe, Vice President of Education in Sia, an information and technology company.
“Therefore, it is difficult to get a fixed price when they bring products from abroad,” she added, not even for technology, but for “paper or even pencils and pens.”
Economic uncertainty is only one of several types facing schools as Trump is looking to implement a wide range of education reforms, including the closure of the Federal Ministry of Education in the end.
It is also not clear how high the high prices are, which may affect summer education and shopping to school in the fall.
“We don’t know if this chalk box will be more expensive in August and September, when parents buy it,” said Chloeck. “I think there are students who will be at school during the summer […] So if schools or parents need to buy supplies and increase prices, or they need to buy things that are directly affected by tariffs in place today, they are likely to be more expensive. ”
