Trump's tariffs made it too expensive for this paper to publish the Sunday comics

A small-town newspaper, The Robesonian of Lumberton, North Carolina, has stopped publishing the Sunday comics because the Trump administration's trade war has made it too expensive.

"One of the targets in Trump's tariffs war has been newsprint from Canada, the cost of which has risen about 30 percent since the beginning of this year," the Robesonian staff explained in an editorial. "The tariffs are protecting a single Washington plant that apparently can't otherwise effectively compete, but is being shielded by the president from the free market — a decidedly un-Republican approach and contrary to the capitalistic fundamentals that have given us the world's No. 1 economy and nourishes it."

The administration originally placed tariffs of 22 percent on Canadian newsprint. Then, on Thursday, under pressure from U.S. newspapers, the Commerce Department capped the rate at 16.88 percent and limited its application.

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The Robesonian editorial closed with the hope that the comic cutback would be temporary. "But for Sunday comics to return, something has to break to our benefit," the editorial said, namely, "additional readers and advertisers, or a change of heart at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Of those two, we know which is more likely."