Only time will tell if Trump has got it right with his tariffs - Yorkshire Post Letters

All cars imported into the USA - at present 47 per cent of the market - are now subject to a 25 per cent tariff, and this "will apply to engines, transmissions, power train parts and electrical components".

The Wall Street Journal commissioned mechanics to strip down America's best selling vehicle - a Ford F150 pick up. They laid out its component parts and labelled them by country of origin.

The wheels and alternator are made in Mexico, half shafts in Canada, tyres in Korea. The automatic transmission comprises a myriad of parts, each one of which would have to be identified to see if it were of foreign manufacture - a highly bureaucratic task needed for every make of vehicle assembled in the USA.

The F150, they found, is made up of parts from 24 countries.The WSJ calculates that, as a result of Trump's tariffs the cost of cars in the USA will rise by an average of more than $6,000.

Reacting to President Trump's Rose Garden speech imposing these world wide tariffs, Professor Scott Lucas said, "This was the most economic illiterate speech I have ever heard" and "full of lies".

Professor Jeffrey Sachs said Trump "will wreck the international trading system". Republican Senator Rand Paul said "tariffs are taxes on the American people".

Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly said "Canada's relationship with America will never be the same ever again".

Kristalina Georgieva, CEO of the International Monetary Fund said that the tariffs pose "a significant risk to the world economy".

Meanwhile President Trump doubled down by saying "the markets are going to boom, the stocks are going to boom, the country is going to boom". Time will tell who is right and who is wrong.