Posted on 03/20/2005 8:11:01 AM PST by A. Pole
So, if we use 1 million tons a year for defense we need tariffs and regulations to protect the entire 101.5 million tons of productive capacity?
It's a protectionist thing. Facts don't matter. Just say "We don't make anything here" often enough and it becomes true.
That is why the greedy freemarketeers can go to Hell (as many of them will).
According to Adam Smith, it is justifiable to levy the tariff as compensation for the burden of regulation even if we didn't use ANY for national defense purposes.
So, how much tariff would be fair? And how much extra cost to steel users is okay to protect 170,000 jobs?
Exactly what I have been thinking as I watch the apologists who want the U.S. to absorb every illegal who crosses our borders. Many churches are also zealously incouraging giving money to help the illegal immigrants. It seems that the dirty secret of the industries near our borders, is that they are enjoying the profits made on the backs of the "illegal immigrant slaves" who are crossing our borders.
Freemarketeers will go to hell because the British starved the Irish?
Still no luck proving Japan's planning worked better that our lack of planning, huh?
There's no need to micromanage the economy in that fashion, especially since excessive regulatory burdens apply to ALL domestic industries. The proper way to address the issue is to levy a relatively low (10~15%), flat-rate "revenue tariff" on ALL imported goods. And to further encourage investment in domestic production with a corresponding reduction in the corporate income tax.
The First Federal Revenue Law
On April 8, James Madison, once again a congressman from Virginia, addressed the House. He went right to the point. Congress, he said, must "remedy the evil" of "the deficiency in our Treasury." He argued that "[a] national revenue must be obtained," but not in a way "oppressive to our constituents." He then proposed that the House adopt legislation, virtually identical to the unimplemented Confederation tariff, imposing a five-percent tariff on all imports....
...A single, uniform tariff, he insisted, had two advantages. First, it could be imposed quickly, which was important because "the prospect of our harvest from the Spring importations is daily vanishing." Second, it was consistent with the principles of free trade ("commercial shackles," he said, "are generally unjust, oppressive, and impolitic")
Because they worship the evil idol Mammon.
we already have an imported light truck tariff in the US - it has helped to, shall we say, "encourage" all these foreign auto maker truck plants to be built in the US - as opposed to having the trucks imported from Thailand, where Japan has large light truck capacity.
So tell us, who has been "crushed" by the current light truck tariff? the US consumer? the US consumer is buying light trucks in record numbers over the past decades that the tariff has been in place. New plants are being built in the US to employ americans at both the end stage and at the supplier level - and why shouldn't they be, since the market for those truck sales is right here.
so where is the evidence that the light truck tariff isn't working?
The light truck tariff has been in effect since, what, 1980? And when did those foreigners start building truck plants here?
The point is, the Japanese just started getting into those segments - they never competed there until somewhat "recently" (was the Toyota Tacoma the first one?). They could have used plant capacity in Thailand to source those products - the tariff was one of the reasons they didn't, and instead built plants in the US.
Agree. The 1980's are good times to remember. The US doom and gloomers were then prophesizing Japan's dominance and the US economic collapse. Hmm, what happened to that?
If you leave the market alone the US adapts. Adaptation not regulation has been the key to US sucess.
And the problem is?
They don't make up for jobs producing products sold to a worldwide market. No leverage. Also, its my understanding most of these automobile factories are final assembly only. The individual components are manufactured overseas.
So if the plants are here, then the tariff is no longer necessary . . . unless you speak for the UAW.
Why is an EU publication describing the brain drain to the US a "speculative" article and your experience of one definitive?
"We've got more and more foreign nationals filling out the ranks in advanced degree programs, and fewer American students. There is a reason for that. Students aren't stupid."
So just the foreign students who do not return to their home countries are "stupid?" Read the articles. The foreign graduates stay here.
Sorry, but your understanding is incorrect. And autos, as opposed to other goods, have federally-mandated content labels. A part manufactured overseas, but installed here qualifies as "foreign."
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