Since there has been not single anti-tariff post on this thread I thought I would be the first to do so. I'm a big Trump fan but he will never convince me that he knows more about foreign trade and economics than Milton Friedman. He doesn't nor do most if not all Freepers including myself.
Tariffs are tax. We pay it. You and I pay it. It may look like the Chinese are paying it but they aren't. It's just money flowing from our bank accounts to Washington D.C.
Here is what Milton Friedman thinks:
Governmental measures constitute the major impediments to economic growth. Tariffs and other restrictions on international trade, high tax burdens and a complex and inequitable tax structure, regulatory commissions government price and wage fixing, and a host of other measures give individuals an incentive to misuse and misdirect resources, and distort the investment of new savings. What we urgently need, for both economic stability and growth, is a reduction of government intervention, not an increase.
Source: Capitalism and Freedom, by Milton Friedman, p. 67 , Nov 15, 1962
So are you wealthy than Donald Trump? Yet you are implying you know more about money than Trump.
We had tariffs from the inception of our free republic in 1787 until late 1996 with the passing of NAFTA. As a matter of fact it was tariffs that funded the Federal government. Hence, there was motive to let people and business within the United States be free to generate more tax revenue for the Republic. Under the previous trade system that the Globalist hate the United States became a super power. We became number one in many things. Today we still have true free trade between the States.
The rigged trade command and control system this professor, who never ran a business, is pushing for has been tried and it has led to the collapse of our Republic. We cannot continue to pay tariffs to China while they pay nothing to us. It will continue to drive all businesses out of our country. Ditto the currency manipulation China does too when we are export too much to China We have tried this for 20 years now and it has turned into a disaster. Our Republic was stronger in 1996 when we were still feeling the ripple effect from the Regan tax cuts in the 1980s.
I think the point is to make it less desirable for consumers to purchase the imported product.
Of course, if the imported item is purchased anyway, the money collected from the tariff goes to Washington.
Buying the American made product sends no money to Washington.