Posted on 03/06/2018 7:48:47 AM PST by Kaslin
From Lincoln to William McKinley to Theodore Roosevelt, and from Warren Harding through Calvin Coolidge, the Republican Party erected the most awesome manufacturing machine the world had ever seen.
And, as the party of high tariffs through those seven decades, the GOP was rewarded by becoming America's Party.
Thirteen Republican presidents served from 1860 to 1930, and only two Democrats. And Grover Cleveland and Woodrow Wilson were elected only because the Republicans had split.
Why, then, this terror of tariffs that grips the GOP?
Consider. On hearing that President Trump might impose tariffs on aluminum and steel, Sen. Lindsey Graham was beside himself: "Please reconsider," he implored the president, "you're making a huge mistake."
Twenty-four hours earlier, Graham had confidently assured us that war with a nuclear-armed North Korea is "worth it."
"All the damage that would come from a war would be worth it in terms of long-term stability and national security," said Graham.
A steel tariff terrifies Graham. A new Korean war does not?
"Trade wars are not won, only lost," warns Sen. Jeff Flake.
But this is ahistorical nonsense.
The U.S. relied on tariffs to convert from an agricultural economy in 1800 to the mightiest manufacturing power on earth by 1900.
Bismarck's Germany, born in 1871, followed the U.S. example, and swept past free trade Britain before World War I.
Does Senator Flake think Japan rose to post-war preeminence through free trade, as Tokyo kept U.S. products out, while dumping cars, radios, TVs and motorcycles here to kill the industries of the nation that was defending them. Both Nixon and Reagan had to devalue the dollar to counter the predatory trade policies of Japan.
Since Bush I, we have run $12 trillion in trade deficits, and, in the first decade in this century, we lost 55,000 factories and 6,000,000 manufacturing jobs.
Does Flake see no correlation between America's decline, China's rise, and the $4 trillion in trade surpluses Beijing has run up at the expense of his own country?
The hysteria that greeted Trump's idea of a 25 percent tariff on steel and 10 percent tariff on aluminum suggest that restoring this nation's economic independence is going to be a rocky road.
In 2017, the U.S. ran a trade deficit in goods of almost $800 billion, $375 billion of that with China, a trade surplus that easily covered Xi Jinping's entire defense budget.
If we are to turn our $800 billion trade deficit in goods into an $800 billion surplus, and stop the looting of America's industrial base and the gutting of our cities and towns, sacrifices will have to be made.
But if we are not up to it, we will lose our independence, as the countries of the EU have lost theirs.
Specifically, we need to shift taxes off goods produced in the USA, and impose taxes on goods imported into the USA.
As we import nearly $2.5 trillion in goods, a tariff on imported goods, rising gradually to 20 percent, would initially produce $500 billion in revenue.
All that tariff revenue could be used to eliminate and replace all taxes on production inside the USA.
As the price of foreign goods rose, U.S. products would replace foreign-made products. There's nothing in the world that we cannot produce here. And if it can be made in America, it should be made in America.
Consider. Assume a Lexus cost $50,000 in the U.S., and a 20 percent tariff were imposed, raising the price to $60,000.
What would the Japanese producers of Lexus do?
They could accept the loss in sales in the world's greatest market, the USA. They could cut their prices to hold their U.S. market share. Or they could shift production to the United States, building their cars here and keeping their market.
How have EU nations run up endless trade surpluses with America? By imposing a value-added tax, or VAT, on imports from the U.S., while rebating the VAT on exports to the USA. Works just like a tariff.
The principles behind a policy of economic nationalism, to turn our trade deficits, which subtract from GDP, into trade surpluses, which add to GDP, are these:
Production comes before consumption. Who consumes the apples is less important than who owns the orchard. We should depend more upon each other and less upon foreign lands.
We should tax foreign-made goods and use the revenue, dollar for dollar, to cut taxes on domestic production.
The idea is not to keep foreign goods out, but to induce foreign companies to move production here.
We have a strategic asset no one else can match. We control access to the largest richest market on earth, the USA.
And just as states charge higher tuition on out-of state students at their top universities, we should charge a price of admission for foreign producers to get into America's markets.
And -- someone get a hold of Sen. Graham -- it's called a tariff.
We spent $4.5 trillion a year today as the federal government level. How do you propose to cut it to $50 billion or less with no direct taxes? And if we won’t do that (and we won’t), go back to my original question, and answer which way of those 3 is the best type of tax.
He was a poster in the 90s that I thought you and other old-timers might remember. He was a Buchanan guy from dawn to dusk and used to run polls to see who we would support after Clinton was gone.
He became so over-the-top about Buchanan that he went from well like poster to one who offended a lot of people and hence, got banned and became an anti-Freeper.
I always got along with him, but many didn’t.
What a fantastic job of summing up the truth about trade and manufacturing! Notice that very word looks like it came from Free Republic threads on trade and tariffs! Obviously Pat is Freeper.
Mark Levin is a globalist sh— stain.
You’re an idiot. The Nips can stuff their Luxus’s up there Keisters.
Great post sir!
Think of trade deficits as arterial bleeding and import tariffs as a tourniquet.
Smoot Hawley didn't go into effect until 1931. The Depression had been going on for 2 years at that point, since 1929. You booger eating moron, I've told you this 10 times now.
Did you drop your name tag?
Hey -itch, try reading the article before posting your drivel.
If we fund cutting the US corp tax rate to 0 by raising the import tariff to say 15-20% across the board they aren't going to reverse it. We spent $4.5 trillion at the federal level. Currently 10% of that is funded by US production, 89% by consumer taxes and deficit spending and 1% by foreign production. How does that make sense exactly?
Not just steel, cement too.
Neo Con Free Traitors™ are the liberals. Did you even read the article?
I define that as pure evil. Anyone defending that is both evil and a traitor.
Try reading the Constitution you < expletive deleted >.
Article 1 - The Legislative Branch
Section 8 - Powers of Congress
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
There are no Constitutional grounds to claim a right to free trade with other countries, none. Get over it.
Agreed, but the free traders do - and I use to be one of them when I joined this site, is the only reason I have some hope they can learn.
Patriots who put country first, like like President Trump, are blessings. As for Free Traitors™? for them, the bayonet.
What is up with you and the name calling and insults? On another thread you posted to someone to FOAD.
Good grief, grow up and act like an adult.
Your distinction between direct and indirect taxes are useless. All of that money comes from one source me and you. Business only collect taxes they do not pay them. Tariffs are taxes. Consumers me and you pay for it. So the questions is what is the best way to tax? One that is the most efficient and least obtrusive to our freedom. A transaction tax would do it. Similar to a cat but with important differences. It would have problem raising enough revenue.
No, some, if not the majority, of the tariff tax is born by the foreign producer in the forms of lower margins or less wages and only some is partially born by the US consumer. It is a false meme that consumers ultimately pay for all increased cost (or get passed through all decreased cost). The easiest way to prove that is this year, corporate profits will go up more than 10% because of the new tax bill. Want to bet CPI still goes up 2% and doesn’t drop 10%?
It’s not false. You can twist the whole lower margins to say the importer absorbs the hit and sometimes that happens but that only means the margins were extraordinary to start with and would have been beat down soon enough. Or the importer decides to try and ride it out and wait for the domstic producer use the tariff protection to raise their prices at which point the importers price with the tariff will again be competitive.
If your scenario is true then tariffs are not effective at limiting imports and thereby creating good jobs since import prices do not go up. Your secnario means the gov just gets more taxes.
At every point the money comes from US consumers. The fact that the importer gets less does change the fact that the consumer paid for it.
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