Why we need an import tariff to protect American jobs. I would start a 5% the first year and then raise it 5% for the next 4 years.
I won't be having any further conversations with you until this happens.
Just an import tariff wouldn’t level the playing field. People do not realize just how skewed things are today.
China places an import duty of between 0% and 100% on goods depending on what it is. By dollar value it averages 12.5%. Then it also places a 17% VAT on top of that, while simultaneously REFUNDING 17% to its own manufacturers for whatever they export.
By contrast, the USA manufacturer has FICA and Income taxes built into the products it exports to China, and gets no refund from the IRS.
Germany (and I think all EU countries with a VAT) have a 19% VAT that gets refunded to their manufacturers when they export and 19% ADDED to the price of American goods sold their.
“Fair Trade” would be if we balanced those tax policies for imports and exports with each country. That would require placing a 32% tariff on Chinese goods and ALSO crediting American manufacturers with 17% of the value of exports to China. 19% each way for Germany. Imagine giving GM a 19% tax credit for Cadilacs shipped to Germany while adding a 19% tariff to BMW vehicles imported.
These numbers seem outrageous, but how can people argue that “free trade (ie, no import tariffs)” is a reasonable policy when our “best” trading partners are so openly screwing us with their own import/export tax policies ? The only way to ever achieve “free trade” and have it be a reasonable policy is if our trading partners first stop cheating.
Trump gets that. Most of us get that.
The fine folks at National Review, Wall Street Journal, Fox News, CNBC, et al. must see it but are unwilling to admit it — they screech about trade wars and Smoot Hawley and how wonderful “free trade” is. We have BEEN in a TRADE WAR for decades, and should have learned by now that unilateral disarmament works no better in TRADE that in any other warfare.