That would be ugly nativism rearing its ugly head, economics be damned. Its like adopting Buchananism without looking at his greased up head.
"The NRST only benefits local manufacturing."
"That would be ugly nativism rearing its ugly head, economics be damned. Its like adopting Buchananism without looking at his greased up head."
That would be true if the FairTax introduced a bias in favor of US producers into our tax system. That would also cause problems with the WTO and our trading partners.
In fact, what the proposal does is remove a bias in favor of foreign competitors which has become enshrined in the US tax system. We can point out that we are taxing foreign consumption items the exact same way that we are taxing our own. It is pretty hard to argue against that from any perspective.