Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you.
Posted on 05/23/2025 6:48:09 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
“ There are no solutions, there are only tradeoffs,” says the venerable Thomas Sowell, but “you try to get the best tradeoffs you can get, and that’s all you can hope for.”
Reasonably understood, Trump’s tariff agenda has always represented a tradeoff for Americans.
Despite an awful lot of misunderstanding of how tariffs function in both theory and practice that has proliferated in recent months, tariffs are not a solution that will magically increase wages for American workers or reshore American manufacturing without considerable costs, and most certainly, the tariffs were never going to be paid by the nations who hope to find buyers of their product in America.
Tariffs are indeed taxes upon the American people, despite some recent and confusing efforts to pretend that they are not.
As the Founders knew well, tariffs are a form of government revenue that is borne by taxpayers. When more money is taken by the government, there is a cost that is paid by someone.
It seems silly to even have to say it, but when a foreign product reaches an American port, there is no American tax collector demanding payment from China or wherever. The cost of the tariff is paid by the American manufacturer or distributor who purchased the product from overseas. The government extracts that revenue from the purchaser of the imported good, not from the seller.
The additional cost that is incurred by the manufacturer or distributor does not disappear. It appears as an additional cost in manufacturing and distribution of the product reaching consumers. The natural response to this, for any individual or corporation, is to pass these additional costs onward to consumers of the product. That is why tariffs are considered consumption taxes, much like a sales tax or an excise tax.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you.
Art of the Deal.
Total globalist malarkey .
When you are $40 Trillion in debt we all have to make sacrifices. It is more important to have tax cuts for the working class.
Marxist hate the tariff and economic nationalism.
No American has the right to buy 3rd world produced goods duty free.
The perfect is the enemy of the good.
Now, they should pay for the costs their decisions placed on the rest of society by eating the tariffs.
The same goes for the high-income earners.
The object here is to raise the proportion of national income going to labor, both pre- and after- tax.
The investment class used to deal with high US labor costs by investing in new plant and equipment & business process re-engineering. Both of these assume, of course, that management knows something about the businesses they operate besides just making money off of labor arbitrage by outsourcing and importing.
The real fear among the business class is their growing realization that if the US returns to its traditional economy, they're out of a job because they have no idea what they are doing. They literally know nothing about the businesses they manage besides lowering costs by getting cheaper goods and lower wages.
Who is William Sullivan?
I can find no backround info on the author at the link.
“As the Founders knew well, tariffs are a form of government revenue that is borne by taxpayers. When more money is taken by the government, there is a cost that is paid by someone.”
Don’t have the time to read all this nonsense, but our Founders were very much in favor of tariffs in order to build up American manufacturing. The now sainted Abraham Lincoln was in favor of tariffs to build up American manufacturing. Obviously, if foreign products are priced out of a market, the product will be manufactured at home.
However, I still plead with these people, if tariffs are so bad and counter-productive, then why do foreign nations love to impose them so much? Why are they only evil if the United States imposes them? And if trade deficits don’t amount to much at all, then why are foreign nations not lined up in competition to incur a trade deficit?
Tariffs are a tool.
A tool can be used for good or bad.
What matters is the intent and talent of the person wielding the tool.
When it’s Trump, tariffs are fine with me.
Apparently, "all" doesn't include the "working class". Trump's just buying their votes, just like pro-labor Democrats have been doing since...forever.
The perfect is the enemy of the good.
Trump stated he did not agree with increasing taxes on “ the rich” but would accept it “ a little bit” to get the larger part of his program.
As for “ tariffs”…Trump was calling out companies using tariffs as an excuse for overall price increases when half or more of their inventory is US sourced.
Bully for Trump.
Home Depot has in fact announced it will NOT raise prices, buys over half its inventory from US suppliers, and by 2028 will not be importing any more than 10% of its merch from any single foreign source
The neoCON free traitors that destroyed the American middle class are coming out of the woodwork!
“Muh corporation!!!!”
we tried open border, “free” trade, outsourcing, insourcing - and it was a complete and total failure - in fact it’s actually treasonous because it took American wealth and used it to enrich and build up the military of our greatest adversary China.
You free traitors should be hiding your heads in shame, but of course you’re not.
Any student of economics knows that cost of taxation is split between the consumer and the producer. Facing competition, the producers cannot apply the full markup represented by the tariff, as we have seen.
Trump lurches leftward??
No! Trump has been populist from the beginning.
Where has William Sullivan been?
While expecting Americans to pony up the blood and treasure to assure safe delivery of their imports.
Rip Sullivan has been asleep for the past decade.
I like how the free traitors claim the tariff cost is ‘passed onto the consumer errrrmagerd!!!!!!!’
when in fact it really cuts into the 1%’s ‘muh corporation’ profits so that the middle class can prosper.
The free traitors are nothing but traitors and liars because they worship the almighty dollar and have no problem screwing over their fellow countrymen. They’re absolute traitors who have no allegiance to making their own country better it’s all about the money for these sick mofos. !!!
for the first 150 years the entire fed. gov. was funded with TARIFFS!!!!
The free traitors won’t tell you that! They want you paying INCOME TAX to support their “Free” markets and open borders and “free” trade!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.