Posted on 02/01/2020 10:54:03 AM PST by SpeedyInTexas
Tariffs were once a mainstay in U.S. trade policy. Constituting the main source of federal revenue from 1790-1914, and at one point providing over 90% of government income, they were a pivotal component of U.S. fiscal and foreign policy. Their main motivation in those times: protect U.S. industry from foreign opposition. It wasn’t until colossal industrial growth coupled with the introduction of the income tax rendered them less critical to the government balance sheet, and their use declined.
Post-World War II, tariffs took on the negative connotation you see today. The West largely eschewed them in favor of free trade and established organizations such as the World Trade Organization (at the time known as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) to seek to remove barriers to commerce.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
Democratic presidents may even use them more than Republican presidents.
Never met a tariff I didn't like...
I’m more in favor of balanced trade by sector, such as with the long-standing US/Canadian auto agreement of my youth.
“Re-invented?”
Hardly. It was more a case of stopping the turning of the other cheek. Tariffs have never been dropped around the world, and Trump’s objection was that the US was on the short end of most relative tariff rates, effectively exporting its wealth to the world by disadvantaging its manufacturers.
I would say no more than a 10% deficit with any country.
10%? Reasonable on rates. Maybe net total trade should include a line item for net foreign aid (which always flows out).
That’s even better.
Trump didn't recreate tariffs; they were always there. What he did was reinvent American policy to no longer be merely reactionary and passive, but engaging and proactive.
The end goals are the same, in the end. The end goals are to have tariff free trade. But without the market manipulation and control that holds back our industries as we refused to follow the same path of backstabbing and manipulation.
There's a whole nuther four years of correcting America's course involved here. That will involve the world paying their fair share for the dividends of peace and prosperity that have been paid for with the American economy and American blood.
When you zoom out, that's a whole lot to take in. The real question is: what did the big picture actually look like before? Children of presidential nominees being employed in rich industries overseas? The vice president's son given a posting for a lavish lifestyle which would obviously otherwise be unavailable to him?
The liberals regularly mock that the world is run by globalist robber barons. Yet when confronted with clear and obvious evidence of those actions they most feared - why, it must be Russian collusion or quid pro quo by the exposer! They are so married to the idealism that they continually to blindly place their idols upon their altar yet fear to gaze upon their godless leaders.
Thank you for your usefulness in clearing the field and keeping the whackjobs from straying from our party, Bernie, here's your new vacation home.
Kinda scary stuff that would be the meat of an international thriller series - vast conspiracies to manage American politicians. And it makes you wonder - how far into individual states have they sunk their claws into? Two obvious targets would be California and New York. What about cities? Seattle is oddly important, Los Angeles, San Francisco?
How deep do they go? And how are they to be rooted out when the merest touch against one favored son of a field of liberal candidates results in the impeachment of a sitting president for doing his job?
When you look at the air traffic and production figures coming out of China, Trump looks like a damn genius. The fact is this country has relied on China and China alone for production of cheap shit goods. You are going to see an awful lot of American CEOs resign when they cannot replicate the earnings figures based on China production.
We are in a time frame when we should no longer be looking at infection rates but rather start looking at mortality rates .
Personally I want to see David Brooks interviewed tomorrow as to whether or not he is still in favor of the Chinese model.
If you ran a consistent trade deficit, your gold reserves decreased and you had to devalue your currency, making imports more expensive and exports cheaper. This provided an important self-corrective to trade imbalances and capital flows.
Nixon removed this mechanism in 1971. So at the same time, US heavy industry was hit with a flood of cheap, often subsidized imports and burdened by hundreds of billions in extra costs for environmental regulations that no one else was imposing at the time on their heavy industry.
It's not surprising that so much US industry and its good jobs disappeared.
“Tariffs were once a mainstay in U.S. trade policy. Constituting the main source of federal revenue from 1790-1914, and at one point providing over 90% of government income, they were a pivotal component of U.S. fiscal and foreign policy. Their main motivation in those times: protect U.S. industry from foreign opposition.”
We need to return to those policies.
Reduce the income tax with the ultimate goal of eliminating it, while imposing more and more tariffs.
Please note the reason for the relinquishing of tarrifs - Federal Income Tax via the 16th Amendment. Ever since then, we have been paying the government to abuse the citizens of the United States and they have been gleefully complying.
We must repeal the 16th Amendment!
It wasn’t until colossal industrial growth coupled with the introduction of the income tax rendered them less critical to the government balance sheet, and their use declined.
Extraconstitutional (some would say unconstitutional) governance.
(1913 - passage of 16th Amendment)
To my astonishment, I have come to appreciate tariffs.
Tarriffs are a great tactic to force open others’ markets.
But like all taxes, they suck in the long term because they feed the beast.
I was at a trade conference last year where the auto industry was the subject of one presentation. According to the guy giving the presentation, a vehicle produced by a domestic auto manufacturer in the Midwest contains raw materials and assembled components that cross the borders between the U.S., Canada and Mexico literally dozens of times before the finished product rolls off the assembly line.
Even a well-intentioned tariff policy can seriously harm industries right here in the U.S. A steel or aluminum tariff, for example, protects the steel and aluminum industries in the U.S. -- but at the expense of all the U.S. industries that BUY these metals.
I am for going back to financing the government principally through tarrifs and scrapping personal income tax altogether.
Tariffs - how could they help with SS and our massive debt?
BS
Tariffs prevent bribery to Congress.
“It wasn’t until colossal industrial growth coupled with the introduction of the income tax rendered them less critical to the government balance sheet, and their use declined.”
I would gladly go back to higher tariffs and NO income tax. That’s when the federal government was a tiny fraction of what it is today and had much less control over our daily lives.
Tariffs got a bad name because the left claimed Hoover’s use of them brought about the Great Depression?
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