If there is going to be a tax put on crude oil, let it be put on the product when it is unloaded from a foreign source. Even if it is Canada or Mexico. And for darned sure if it comes from Venezuela.
Tariffs as a means of collecting revenue were pretty much how this country filled the coffers of the Treasury before the imposition of income taxes. Not that the tariff would ever possibly substitute for cash flow from internal taxation, but the effect would be to insulate US production from the vicissitudes of capricious changes in the flow of crude oil to the industrialized world.
After all, there is no problem at all with keeping high tariffs on sugar, or ethanol from Brazil, for example.
Good point !