How will this help?
I think what you are thinking of is a tariff.
Generally tariffs are done in order to protect domestic goods and make them more appealing to be bought b/c the tariff cost has to then be added onto the foreign product.
If you can somehow show how this will benefit Americans at the pump I’d be for it. With a product like oil, given how much some of the domestic oil costs to produce, I’d really like to see how someone can show how a tariff would benefit the American consumer.
Also a good time to start phasing out ethanol in gasoline.
Not unless they stop putting corn in my gasoline.
The devil is in the details.
How much of a tax?
What exactly is to be taxed? Crude or refined products that get sold?
Who pays the tax? US business that purchase the oil is the most likely answer as it would be very difficult to tax companies not operating in the US.
Would this apply to oil sands as well?
import tax...
an unearned windfall for domestic oil producers.
a better idea is an export tax.
Really bad idea.
Why do you want to make the US refining and petrochemical industry more expensive than the rest of the world?
Because taxes are always good.
Because we haven’t pissed off Canada enough, yet?
I believe most of our imported oil is from Canada.
More taxes is a really stupid idea - sorry. Why should I give government even more tax revenue so they can waste it on crap?
I would like to replace all income taxes with tariffs and an modest NRST.
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.
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.
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.
If we want more domestic oil we don’t need a tariff on foreign oil, we just need to stop kneecapping domestic oil. We stand in our own way on this one.
I think it was Rush Limbaugh who long ago pointed out that encouraging increasing taxes on *anyone*, for whatever reason, is wrong. It’s usually done to punish someone, and it never works in doing that. But it invariably has very bad side effects that those who wanted the tax never imagined.
We buy oil on the world market, regardless of where our contracts are made, therefore, a tariff will simply increase the cost of oil across the board.
A tariff targeting a particular industry is ultimately just a subsidy for domestic production. We should be getting rid of subsidies, especially farm subsidies and corporate subsidies.
We should not be rewarding inefficient producers, even domestic ones. We are no more obligated to bail out the US petroleum energy industry than we were obligated to subsidize Solyndra or bail out the UAW or the Banksters.
IIRC, we cannot target specific countries for anticompetitive practice under the WTO.
We should eliminate the ethanol subsidies and quotas. Dairy and Beef producers have been warning for years what an absolutely ridiculous idea it is to add baseline costs to the #1 grain crop of the country. The science backs them up. Even under wet milling of ethanol, the net oil displacement is on 0.26. That is, one "barrel" of ethanol, takes 3/4 of a barrel of oil produce. Using dry milling, there is actually a net loss of energy: it takes more than one barrel of oil to produce one barrel of ethanol. Research done at Cornell University made this claim YEARS ago. Under the Clinton Administration the USDA claimed the research was bad. Now, under full production, the Cornell results have been verified, and the USDA says, "Oops!" [and Bush was supposedly the guy "politicizing" science.]
None of that takes into consideration the increased cost of food production caused by the ethanol subsidy, nor the horrific damage that ethanol does to internal combustion engines, particularly small ones like chainsaws and lawn mowers, but also the injection systems of expensive cars.
Tell me again, why we would create a whole new subsidy lobby for the US Oil Companies?
Subsidies hurt everyone, but they hurt the people who receive them the most. If the Saudis want to sell us product under production cost we'll be happy to take their money. Frack'd wells can be restarted without significant production costs when prices rise, as they inevitably will.
Government is the problem. Money sent to the government keeps the monster growing. If you think tariff money will be used for anything other than pork funding and more debt I have a bridge in lower Manhattan to sell you. Don't feed the beast.