How will the proposed tariffs affect your county?

If the recently proposed tariffs on China and Mexico go into effect, almost every American will feel it in their finances.

To find out who would be most affected, informatics professors at Northern Arizona University mapped out the far-reaching the effects of those trade tariffs down to county. In a recent analysis of 2015 commodity trade data, they found that 98 percent of the U.S. population lives in an area where Mexico or Eastern Asia, a global trading region that contains China, is one of the top two international trading partners. Add in Canada, which has been a question in recent months as the United States has put forward a replacement for NAFTA, and look at the top three trading partners, and every person in the United States lives in an area that could be affected by tariffs.

“In the past two years, tariffs have been proposed, or imposed and removed, that could affect almost every single person in the U.S.,” said Richard Rushforth, assistant research professor in SICCS. “Uncertainty with global trading partners has real, local implications for all Americans.

Benjamin Ruddell, an associate professor in the School of Informatics, Computing and Cyber Systems (SICCS), leads the National Science Foundation-funded FEWSION Project (ACI-1639529), which maps the U.S. economy’s food, energy and water systems and their connections to the broader economy and environment. This tool visualizes supply chains and can be an indicator of how specific communities will be affected by events like hurricanes, flooding or trade wars, which can disrupt the supply chain.

Benjamin Ruddell, associate professor of informatics: (928) 523-3124 or [email protected]

Richard Rushforth, assistant research professor: (602) 677-4651 or [email protected]