Posted on 03/17/2016 5:09:38 AM PDT by expat_panama
I’ve said some nice things about Donald Trump of late and have been excoriated by many on the anti-Trump right (in contradistinction from the anti-Trump left) for this act of treason. I like the fact that Trump really is...
Yet there is a reality in the Trump movement that is painfully obvious: voters are not for free trade. We haven’t made the sale. They’re not buying into the comparative advantage argument...
...By the way, I like Mr. Trump’s relentless focus on jobs — and the villain here isn’t Mexico and China, it’s Washington, D.C. and a president who for seven years has been an unmitigated anti-business disaster.
So how do we keep trade lines open and free as possible while satisfying the backlash...
...there’s a better way to do this that doesn’t violate any of our existing trade deals...
...The guy who gets this is Ted Cruz. His tax plan, which Arthur Laffer and I first designed...
...Conservatives have long dismissed the importance of a border adjustable tax system — and some economists say it really doesn’t matter in the long term. But they are wrong. It does matter. If you tax something, you get less of it...
Meanwhile, both the Cruz and Trump plans lower the corporate tax rate...
...One problem with conservatives is that we have gotten out of the habit of listening to what voters are telling us...
With a border adjustable flat tax, we can have free trade and tax reform and millions of new jobs for the middle class to boot. We can also unite the free market conservatives with the Trump army to defeat the left.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
Taxes are the charges by which Government is generally funded. Tariffs are taxes. They, as other excise taxes, were the preferred way the Founders proposed for the funding of our Federal Government. Article I Sec. 9 of the Constitution specifically rules out the present abomination with respect to graduated taxes on incomes.
Granted, as Jefferson understood, high tariffs are not good; they do interfere with the free flow of commerce; just as graduated income taxes interfere with the optimum use of individual talent in commerce.
Those who pontificate about the harm that tariffs do--and I agree with many of their points there, under ordinary circumstances;--discredit themselves, when they refuse to consider the deleterious effects of other forms of taxation.
What now tips the scales more strongly back in favor of reconsidering tariffs, frankly, is the destruction of a sense of community, in communities across the continent, by the politically correct internationalists values, that the Academic/Media complex & the craven political establishments have created, which takes the stigma out of people ignoring the social & economic interests of their respective communities. (Macro economics mask these concerns.)
The people strutting around as "experts" on these subjects need the wonderful take down, that Donald Trump is giving them. As a proponent of traditional American values & the legitimate interests & rights of our rooted citizenry for over 60 years, I unhesitatingly applaud the efforts of Donald Trump in these regards.
Donald gets it. The pseudo intellectual poseurs in the political establishments in both parties, really are clueless.
We stand with Donald!!
Rearranging the desk chairs does NOTHING to the root cause: (big) govt.
The U.S. has the highest corporate tax rate in the world.
The U.S. taxes FOREIGN as they do domestic.
REAMS of regulations/rules
Dept/Agencies aplenty
SWARMS of govt. agents to harass
And more year after year after...
...NOTHING in support of biz, just roadblock upon roadblock upon...
Until GOVT, and its rightful size/scope, are restored will anything else be, at best, but a band-aid.
A 20% import tariff balances the budget tomorrow.
Incentives my friend. If we refrain from taxing the heck out of corporations here we will get more revenue generated here. That will bring some jobs back.
Then it will be up to Trump to persuade them to do that. You don't think he is persuasive enough? The only problem with Trump is he will make deals and some aspects of the deal may be detrimental in the long run. We could end up with Cruz's VAT or virtually anything else. Totally unpredictable. OTOH, I have no doubt he will do his utmost to make America great and by that I mean a growing economy and lots of good new jobs.
The taxes are on revenue not profits. In some cases it turns into profits taxes because Congress is always allowing various expenses to be used as tax deductions. That has to be eliminated as well for this to work.
Why would Trump get Congress working? They’re in open revolt against his nomination. At least Cruz had some allies when he protested Obamacare. A lot of Senators joined in with him on his filibuster. When Cruz is wielding more power as President, he’ll be able to do more. And he understands how Congress works and what their interests are, having been there.
Partly. Mostly it is speculation on commodity booms and those booms are partly rooted in cheap credit creating bubbles in foreign markets. QE is present and expanding. But in Europe right now. When they are done we will resume that same stupidity here.
Big cap manufacturing LOVES regulations for two reasons. It keeps the upstart riff-raff out of the market and it also gives cover for the offshoring, a fig leaf if you will. They really want to exploit slave labor overseas and "overbearing" regulations and taxes are the prefect cover and "movement" conservatives fall for this BS every time.
Because successful business people know how to get people who hate them to work together and with them. “Wielding power” is not the way to get things done.
After 30 years of budget deficits, astronomical unemployment, urban decay and huge trade deficits you’d think Free Traitors™ would be rounded up and put in either insane asylums or concentration camps.
Which is only 4% greater than what Cruz is proposing. But I am sure anyone who actually calls Cruz's tax a "tariff" which it of course is in terms of its effect, would be ridiculed by Cruz himself.
Actually a 20% import tariff would probably do less damage to the economy than the Cruz 16% VAT.
Tariffs would be beneficial, it would stop off shoring cold. It will promote the repatriation of industry. Win-Win.
You can do better than that lame argument. Of course the Democrats will use that rhetoric to try to defeat Sen. Cruz in the general election, and many voters will rightly agree with them. Why should those of us who are self employed or run small businesses vote to increase our tax rates but not those of the wealthy?
I'm not suggesting any kind of class hatred at all, just a careful analysis of what the Cruz value added tax really means. And I think if you think about it you'll realize it won't have the beneficial effects that Cruz and its other proponents assign to it.
Do you really think cutting the tax on income from capital investments to 10% while increasing the tax on operating businesses will lead to more jobs?
If true I still fail to see how it would bring jobs back to the U.S.
So if a business located in the USA has export revenue, that revenue is exempt from the 16% VAT tax. But those same sales from a foreign enterprise controlled by the US investors are already exempt from that kind of taxation. The difference is only in imports by the US business, which is why for all practical purposes with respect to imports the Cruz plan is the same as a 16% import tariff. It raises costs for US customers, and makes imports more expensive.
But note, since the US based company has to pay the same 16% tax on locally made or imported products, it has no reason to move production to the USA - particularly since labor costs, materials, etc. are less costly overseas.
Cruz's VAT scheme is a big spender's dream, but a bad choice for small business and self employed Americans.
Give me a break! Lyin’ Ted is a lawyer and politician and never hired a person for all his life, what would he know about tax/economy/international trade?!
Right ---KILL ALL THE BUSINESS OWNERS!!!
57 posts and no one has tried to re-write history and tell us that an insignificant trade bill, Smoot-Hawley, caused the Great Depression.
Neither change is happening without congress. And congress will have a big say in the end result. We need a president who can help get congress working. I think Trump is the best for that.
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I like Cruz. I like flat tax. I hate value added tax which Mr. Cruz wants.
The stupidity of the United States is that we tax business at all. When a business pays taxes it raises prices to cover the tax, who pays? The person who buys the business goods pays the tax whether thats US consumers of foreign companies or consumers it makes US prices high.
Get rid of Business tax period. You reduce accounting costs, you reduce the cost of government and you reduce prices and increase competition because everybody and their brother will come here to open a tax free business.
I’m ok with a tariff if there is legal cause, say for dumping or government subsidizing but other than that lets not do the tariffs.
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