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Posted on 08/13/2025 3:10:54 AM PDT by TBP
The proper response to foreign tariffs is nothing. Here is why.
1. A tariff is a tax on your citizens. Retaliation means you tax your buyers and your producers to “punish” a foreign government. You hurt the innocent to spite the guilty.
2. Imports are the benefit of trade. Exports are the cost you pay to get them. Blocking imports means you block the benefit and keep the cost.
3. Unilateral free trade raises real incomes. It lowers input costs for businesses, speeds innovation, and forces domestic firms to win by serving customers, not by lobbying.
4. Tariff tit for tat creates a spiral of higher prices and uncertainty. Even if others later drop theirs, you have already damaged your economy.
5. If another country taxes its people or subsidizes you with cheap goods, they harm themselves. Let them. Do not copy their mistake.
6. A rights-protecting government does not violate peaceful trade among its citizens to chase geopolitical leverage. Its job is to protect consent, contract, and property, not ration who may buy what.
Foreign tariffs are their mistake. Retaliation makes it our mistake too. Do nothing, buy freely, get richer.
Maybe the countries that have been tariffing us into oblivion for the last half century should have considered the above.
“tariffing us into oblivion”
.........market share ??
In this day we are responding to a larger issue, the abuse of tariffs to take advantage of the US.
Go overseas and look around for American-made vehicles. How is it that one of the best-selling cars in history, the F-150, cannot be found on a euro street?
Goldman Finds “Sharp Declines” In Import Prices As Foreigners Absorb Trump’s Tariffs
I don’t think Trump fully realizes how much the US has lost in terms of domestic manufacturing to a point almost all raw materials and goods come from outside the US and these tariffs end up being a tax on the citizens as imported materials used in manufacturing come from outside and result in the manufacturer having to pass on higher raw material costs whether a part for a car, a wheel for wagon or a doodad. The US is no longer in the business of manufacturing everything needed to make products using 100% domestic materials and those businesses who make that stuff WON’T relocate here due to excessive taxes and regulation, which was why they off-shored to begin with.
“In this day we are responding to a larger issue, the abuse of tariffs to take advantage of the US.”
Notice how very few, if any nations are saying, “let’s just end tariffs” and trade freely without taxing each other.
Free trade is a good idea for equal countries. Free Trade with a slave state that just throws it’s garbage into the ocean is a less good idea.
Here is my response...
If you don’t buy our stuff then we aren’t buying your stuff. PERIOD!
1) Price discovery. Folks have a ceiling on what they will pay for any good or service. Above that ceiling, folks will substitue and buy sumting else.
2) Selling into the largest Global Market. Manufacturers and Importers can pay the tariff or sell their stuff sumwhere else. Or, they can make their stuff in the USA
By these standards, Trump’s tariff binge makes no sense and is potentially destructive. But that’s OK because they are designed to be chaotic and short-lived.
Correct.
Many since the Marshall plan after WWII.
And free trade is the way to go, that is why only America was actually committed to free trade. /more sarcasm
How has that worked for us in the past?
In my opinion it has been a killer for this nation.
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You are correct.
President Trump and his Cabinet always refer to “they” or “them” when saying who pays the tariffs. The implication is always that the exporter pays the tariffs.
As a reality, the amount of money actually being raised by the tariffs must be humongous. The talk is to provide the public a tariff stimulus check. That will actually be a partial tax refund to the public that obscures the total left and kept by the government.
The tariffs are the tax increase that will be responsible for paying off the debt.
The congress is not objecting. The congress knows there could never be any other tax increase that would pass.
Another day another ignorant rant against tariffs. FOAD.
no.......ypu totally misunderstand. The exporter can not pay the tariff. The American importer pays the tariff and passes it on to the consumer
“a giant sucking sound going south” - the Little General
You are an old loser.
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