Mark is still obsessed with Trump’s talk about tarrifs. Mark says today he wants companies to threaten to sue Trump for interfering with their businesses. Howevever Trump has only used threats of tarrifs. Reagan used threats of tarrifs and tarrifs. Why is that ok for Reagan but not for Trump?
Mark Levin doesn’t know squat about tariffs and repeats nonsense like “the Smoot-Hawley tariff caused the Great Depression”. He hasn’t read any serious economic history and he gets away with it because 99% of the public doesn’t read economic history either and they don’t know that he’s full of $%it.
It’s an especially enjoyable irony to have a Lincoln fan like Levin condemning tariffs and demanding free trade- just further evidence of his profound ignorance of the history of American tariffs.
The American gov’t was financed by tariffs from 1788 until 1913. It not only survived, it became a major economic power with tariffs paying the gov’ts bills.
Tariffs were also used expressly for protection of American industry. Alexander Hamilton as first Treasury Secretary proposed this, and his plan was the passed by the First Congress and signed into law by President George Washington. I guess they were economic ignoramuses compared to the genius Levin.
Our economic competitors don’t believe in free trade and they don’t practice it. Japan perfected a managed trade model that protects the home market for domestic industry. Most of Asia now imitates it. They largely employ non-tariff barriers that have the identical effect as tariffs, it just makes the barriers harder to prosecute in international forums.