+1 on the Fair Tax.
A 100% tariff would mean all our trade partners would retaliate in kind, killing foreign demand for our own exports (steel & coal, for example, are seeing huge increases in export demand). And the fact is we cannot produce all that our industry and consumers demand (oil for example), or as cheaply. The result would be an tax-induced inflationary trend, reducing our individual buying power. No thanks!
If we export so much, how is it we are running the largest trade deficit in the history of the world?
We don’t export that much. We would gain far more from a “trade war”, than we would lose.
We continue to operate, on data (see: “Smoot-Hawley”) which has been completely divergent from reality for several decades.