Posted on 05/17/2016 12:12:21 PM PDT by Jim W N
We also pay for the offshoring “savings” through higher govt costs, higher taxes and higher national debt.
The two issues are not related. The tariff addresses the symptom and is stop gap measure until a remedy can be found. Your question is like the hater of the second amendment asking how treating gunshot wounds and saving a persons life addresses the core problem of gun manufacturing.
Your question is silly.
Yes. And they also believe that Americans will step in to produce the tariffed items. But a bad investment climate such as we have now will still be a bad investment climate.
To wit, the tariff on Chinese tires. It's cost American consumers some $8 billion dollars and created about 1200 jobs in American tire plants.
Raise revenue through tariffs if you want, just understand what they will and won't do.
An importer can choose to “eat” the tariff.
Inane premise.
I think that is the point isn't it?
But not as nasty as offshoring and re importing duty fee and pocketing the difference. That is called international labor arbitrage and is the stuff of revolution.
And sales taxes are paid by sellers, and corporate income taxes are paid by firms, right?
Well, guess what?
When you deliberately and enthusiastically create a massive over-supply of low skill labor, wages go down.
And when wages go down, low skill laborers go to the polls and elect politicians who promise to raise the minimum wage.
Manufacturing is special and is a major wealth creation engine of the economy. Any company engaged in DOMESTIC manufacturing should be exempt from income taxes. Tariffs could more than make up for that revenue.
Tariffs are hardly a palliative as they are a tax, therefore a cost borne by the producer, wherever the point of origin of the goods. As such, they are a weapon that distorts trade flows and a favored weapon of political assholes devoid of free market economics such as the GOP; which used them to fund the entire government from 1865 till the imposition of the income tax in 1913. History has detailed the corrosive impact of Tariffs on the Great Depression.
I suppose we could bring back child labor.
in 1900 18% of workers were children under the age of 16.
25% under the age of 15 ( half under the age of 12) were employed by the cotton mills.
Feds stopped this in the 30’s,
Most in this forum would agree that raising the cost of labor through raising the minimum wage will result in fewer jobs. Why doesn’t raising the cost of labor by applying tariffs result in fewer jobs?
And, yes, tariffs do raise the cost of labor since ‘protecting jobs’ means you will pay more for those ‘protected jobs’.
That is only true to the extent that the goods being manufacture enjoy a comparative advantage in opportunity costs of production. Tariffs distort true opportunity costs of production, and might benefit a particular industry to the detriment of the overall local economy.
Nope, they are a cost borne by the importer and ultimately the consumer.
It lowers the cost of labor in other countries to the point where the quality suffers.
How do you define "domestic" manufacturing? Are you referring to producing things only in the US for consumption in the US (as in no production for exports)? Do you mean manufacturing that uses only components sourced domestically (meaning no foreign content such as specialty metals that are only found outside the US)? And does your domestic manufacturing include all the bogus "green energy" projects that despite massive government subsidies still can't make any money?
Where do I sign?
Why don't we try for the whole enchilada and actually bring back the Constitution as written and originally understood and intended as the Supreme Law of the Land, the only legal bulwark of political freedom against the tyranny of the feds.
I wish we all knew that. Many seem a bit confused about that and even more confused about tariffs having anything to do with fixing it.
Yes, but as President, Trump’s promise to prevent companies from leaving would be an unconstitutional act unless he’s saying he’ll tax the h#ll out of them if they leave. But I’ve heard him say he’ll actually prevent them from leaving. The feds are not authorized by the Constitution to do that.
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