Posted on 12/03/2014 12:14:10 PM PST by jyro
I can't think of a tax I have even been for so this is new ground for me. Think about a tax on imported oil. Discuss.
Can’t the refinery’s use domestic oil? I really don’t know. I thought most of the world refineries were in the USA, we export gasoline to the world.
One justification was that “big eth” was displacing 10% of gasoline usage, but now that need is not important.
send the tax money to the states for road and bridge repair
I don’t care if my money goes to Canada or Mexico or Britain for oil. I do care if my money goes to Saudi Arabia or Iran or Russia or ISIS for oil. A tariff does not distinguish between friends and enemies; a political policy where America’s friends get rewarded and America’s enemies get shamed does. When Ted becomes President, the Cruz of oil will never run out.
Call me cynical, but I am convinced the biggest justification is the primacy of the Iowa caucuses.
Anything that interferes with the free market has negative economic consequences - misallocating resources and distorting price signals.
Also, put a tariff in place and it either stays forever (even when market conditions change) or gets used by the left as a bargaining chip in future energy policy negotiations.
If the foreign countries are undercutting their prices so they can drive new oil producers out of business, then a tarriff is in order.
the constitution was originally designed to fund the government like that, wasn’t it?
Nah. For national security, get the NIMBYs and anti-competition interests out of the way of the Keystone XL. Let it go through. OPEC would lose even more control over oil prices.
We import ~7 million barrels a day of crude oil.
‘send the tax money to the states for road and bridge repair’
Because you can always count on the Permanent Political Class not to raid the kitty, take a cut for itself, or otherwise abuse tax $.
The US imports more gasoline and gasoline blending products than we export. We are a net gasoline importer.
We really need to run primary/caucus in order of percentage R vote in the previous POTUS election.
If only.
That’s the reason I wanted discussion, I have a admittedly simplistic view of it all. I would like to enhance domestic production and make it cost more for Middle East oil. I wouldn’t be for a tariff on Canadian oil. I would like to see the tariff go back to the states for infrastructure repair.
I’d settle for letting domestic producers export.
As it is now, it’s basically a transfer from royalty owners and small operators to multinational oil companies.
One more clarification. The world refines about ~91 MMBPD and the US refines ~16 MMBPD of that, ~18%.
Asking the federal government to take money from one industry and select where else to spend it is a really bad idea.
It’s great to have an oil expert on FR...
Just copying info from your tax dollars at work.
Energy Information Administration
part of the Department of Energy
http://www.eia.gov/
Tariffs only after the budget is really balanced (no borrowing from SSI or any other gimmicks). Then any proceeds to pay back the debt, what we are doing to future American generations is criminal and we must pay it back and not kick the can down the road...
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