Posted on 12/19/2009 3:04:59 PM PST by dalight
But this wouldn’t be Congress’s first historic mistake.
The Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930 to “buy American” sounded like a good way to protect jobs by keeping out cheaper foreign products. Historians agree it was a mistake, setting off waves of retaliatory tariffs and making the Great Depression worse.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
It is a false choice. Stop trying to imply that a tax is less of a tax because it is “indirect.” You still pay it . . . what difference does the existence of a middleman make?
I implied nothing, it is a simple question.
difference between a direct tax, and a tariff.
Well, then. Pretend I’ve answered, ignore my objection, and proceed to your point. You have one, don’t you?
So the middle man paying taxes is your answer?
Surely an astute commentator such as oneself would then have to acknowledge that the tariffs are only paid if...an item with a tariff on it is purchased.
Tariffs are completely voluntary taxation.
Trade was slowing, but still growing.
Trade declined and collapsed in the few years after Smoot.
Further the idea of world trade, free trade, commerce across national lines, that idea was flushed, by Smoot, and Hawley, down the drain, especially in Germany and Japan.
And, guess who filled the void with hyper nationalistic jingo?
I could argue that 60 million dead and the economic waste of the thirties, the destruction and war of the 40’s the comparative strength of the Soviet Union and Communism could be laid at the foot of those two idiots.
Domestic manufactures raise, or keep prices up to the tariff level, so they are not voluntary as there is no way to avoid them.
Buy the import, pay the tariff. Buy the domestic, pay the price very very close to the tariff.
Was it Smoot Hawley, or Reparations for WW1?
Japan had chosen the British Model, they saw the Greater East Asia CoProsperity Sphere as a tool for expansion and economic dominance, they wanted to be the British Empire of the 18th Century in the 19th Century.
And I would say that is a false argument, Smoot Hawley effected imports, not exports, what kicked off WW2 in the Pacific was embargos on shipping oil and steel to Japan, it had nothing whatever to do with Smoot.
Additionally, the decrease in trade could just as easily be attributed to the general Recession that rebounded around the world.
Smoot has become something of a shiboleth, and wars have not stopped being fought, far from it, if anything wars in the future will be far more bloody, how close did India and Pakistan come to a nuclear exchange in the 90’s?
An increase in prices would depend on the number of domestic companies and business engaged in producing the same product, Markets are not suspended because there are no competing imports, far from it, a business concern in WA can still easily out compete a business in say NY simply because of the differences in State and Local taxes and regulatory burdens and mandates.
The real difference would come in the “who” was making the profits, small businesses or global corporations.
I thought that's where you were going, and your obfuscation was simply to disguise the fact that you are wrong. You pay higher taxes when a tariff is raised when the domestic producer raises his prices (with the government's blessing), and you pay higher taxes when a tariff is raised when you buy a domestic product that contains an imported component.
So go ahead, avoid buying cocoa butter (I do). Now try to avoid buying chocolate. Or come to FR and claim that you are not paying higher taxes when you buy that chocolate. LOL
It's should be surprising that the argument that tariffs are "free" often comes coupled with the argument that tariffs "protect high-paying jobs." Think about that for a minute. If either, or both, arguments are true, we should raise tariffs 1000% across the board.
Business have to make a profit. If you have many competing competitors, you have duplicated owners, accountants, sales staff, advertising other back office expenses. You most also might have many under capitalized companies that can not afford expensive moder machinery and process. So, you do’t get lower costs from more competitive companies becasuse either they can not, because of small size and low profits with a market that is materially full filled, or they are inefficient and don’t have the excess profits to fund new equipment.
In your case what usually happens is either price fixing, or consolidation, then you might have two, price fixing, or even one company. This is the usual effect seen in many Latin and South American countries.
Also what you basically have in that case is our one company reciprocally cut off from the entire world. Usually those companies have less incentive to innovate.
Your example might be true....for a while. All actions have dynamic reactions/consequences after a while. This is something lefties, RINOs, don’t foresee.
You can drive from northern New Jersey, up to Maine, then accross that width as far south as Pensilvania, and along the lakes to as far West as Detroit/Gary and there are hundreds of dead cities all run on Democrat economic notions.
Both. Both were very primitive short sighted economics. Germany was in the most fundamental and true sense, bankrupt, both financially, politically and physically.
Smoot was another simple, dumb, economically ignorant, and protective of, in the case of the Utah Smoot family fortune, and others. Smoot hurt the mass of leaving the farm, entering the urban factory worker.
On the international side, since Wilson, the US and others had been working to increase world trade, rebuild Europe, and promote Democracies. That was all discredited by Smoot. All of it.
You’ll notice after this recent crisis, no country introduced any trade protections. Not a one. That tells you something.
I didn’t know we had so many admirers of North Korean national economic policy on FR.
( It’s not that bad. It is just people see only the first, most immediate action, and are unable to see the second, third and so forth actions down the line over time. )
........it was not the trade wars but the act of attempting to balance the budget.....
AKA austerity or tight money
The Keynesians have been fretting about it ever since and their solution of massive loose money is now in process.
The recent Stimulus bill has shown that the intervention of the Reagan era, reducing taxes to expand the economy, was the most effective way to expand the economy.
Spending, as it is directed and must be managed is subject to corruption and the targeting makes the effect like a squirt bottle trying to fight a growing fire..
http://buchanan.org/blog/the-isolationist-myth-165
Pat has a good political education but his economics is pitiful.
Typical, one does not pay a tariff, no matter how much one may twist, project, slander, whatever, unless one purchases the good that has a tariff placed upon it.
One can make up (as only a Globalist can) whichever scenario a fevered mind can, the plain fact is, Tariffs are completely voluntary taxation and were the mechanism that was designed into the Constitution to fund the federal government.
Thems facts.
Oh, I don’t know, say that George W. Bush slaps a tariff on imported steel. You gonna stop buying steel?
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