Buttigieg: Supply Chain Issues Will Persist as Long as There’s a Pandemic

The Epoch Times ^ | 10-21-21 | Jack Philliphs

[Lizavetta]

Lol!

[SunkenCiv]

The Demagogic Party *is* the Pandemic.

[central_va]

Smoot Hawley act of 1921

Protectionism Didn't Cause the Great Depression By Ian Fletcher

The debate over free trade is riddled with myth after myth. One that keeps resurfacing, no matter how many times it is discredited, is the idea that protectionism caused the Great Depression. One occasionally even hears that this same protectionism -- specifically, the Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930 -- was responsible in significant part for World War Two! This is nonsense dreamed up for propaganda purposes by free traders, and it can easily be debunked.

Let's start by reminding ourselves of a basic fact: The Depression's cause was monetary. The Federal Reserve had allowed the money supply to balloon excessively during the late 1920s, causing it to pile up in the stock market as a bubble. The Fed then panicked, miscalculated, and let the money supply collapse by a third by 1933, depriving the economy of the liquidity it needed to breathe. Trade had nothing to do with it.

The Smoot-Hawley tariff was simply too small a policy change to have so large an effect as triggering a depression. For a start, it applied to only about one-third of America's trade: about 1.3 percent of our GDP. One point three percent! America's average tariff on goods subject to tariff went from 44.6 to 53.2 percent -- not a very big jump at all. America's tariffs were higher in almost every year from 1821 to 1914. Our tariffs went up in 1861, 1864, 1890, and 1922 without producing global depressions, and the great recessions of 1873 and 1893 spread worldwide without needing the help of any tariff increases.

[central_va]

In a tariff based tax system, people are only taxed if they purchase foreign made goods. If you’re in Canada there are province to province tariffs also, so that’s an additional potential tax that consumers would pay however here’s the kicker when it comes to tariff taxes. The actual tax is paid by the businesses and then passed onto the consumers. Which in real terms equates to the consumers having a choice to pay or not to pay the tax.

Tariffs vs. Income Taxes – Which tax is better?

[fwdude]

Noting is their fault, everything they screwed up was caused by Covid.

And the Covid farce will be perpetuated by this criminal administration.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

[jmacusa]

So sayeth Petty The Rump Ranger.