[sixmil]

As Cato Institute trade-policy analyst Dan Ikenson explains, under a $9.5 million program, the U.S. Customs Service (now part of DHS) assigns agents to the Textile Production Verification Team (TPVT). They travel the world inspecting textile factories and corporate "books and records in order to verify the country of origin or the eligibility for a trade preference" for various garments. Imagine that a Chinese sweater maker ran into a filled U.S. import quota, then transported those goods to Hanoi, relabeled them as Vietnamese and shipped them to Seattle from there. The ever-vigilant TPVT would unravel that scheme.

It would be a lot simpler to just collect tariffs at the border, but instead we get the big gov't non-solution, which gives dems and repubs more stuff to waste time debating on.

[.cnI redruM]

That's one reason our tariff policy costs our economy more money than it brings in. I could probably be persuaded to tolerate a 5% tariff on any item that got brought in if the revenue were used for something useful. For example, you put it in a fund and pull out money to recompense people that spend six weeks in a hospital after eating tainted green onions.

That way, people would know ahead of time, what the market price would remain near when they planned hiring and manufacturing. Price stability would significantly lower US unemployment.