"If you remove non-income tax taxes from exports the other countries will remove their VAT taxes which will leave you with no change."
"VAT countries already do that; it is one of the main principles behind VAT taxation. Therefore, there would be no change in this respect."
"They have non VAT taxes as well."
I am well aware of that. Your point is? You implied that we should not convert to a border adjustable tax because other countries would retaliate with their VATs. I pointed out that they already are border adjusting their VATs. What point are you trying to make - that they will convert from other non-border adjustable taxes to those that are border adjustable (such as their VAT)?
Actually, that's why they tried their VATs originally but found that in practice they fell down badly and so had to be bolstered by other taxes such as personal and/or corporate income tax.
Even Zambia (which claims to have the wunnerfulest VAT on the planet) has both personal and corporate income tax as well as VAT. If Zambia does it, can others be far behind (acrually they're ahead, having had those systems longer with Z being a relative late-comer).
Just more of the same old "We'll wear them down with circular arguments" tactic they have been employing for some time now if you ask me.
Personally I'm sorely tired of it.
I never said anything about "retaliation" with VAT. The point is that there are taxes outside the US which offset the disadvantage to US exports.