Posted on 03/25/2006 8:07:17 PM PST by ncountylee
The Durabrand 10-inch portable DVD player available at Wal-Mart retails for $199.94. A group of senators would like to raise the price to $254.67. The Creative Zen Nano Plus 512-megabyte MP3 player seems like a bargain at $89.72; less so at $114.39, the price the senators would prefer that you pay. The price hikes would be the result of a 27.5 percent tariff on goods imported from China, a proposal sponsored by Democrat Chuck Schumer of New York and Republican Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and is scheduled to come up for a vote in the Senate this week.
Schumer and Graham aren't crazy, of coursethey know better than most that taking money out of voters' pockets is a sure way to be sent packing. In other words, that 27.5 percent price hike won't be coming to a retailer near you anytime soon. But as an attention-getter, it's pretty good, and attention is what the two senators, and a number of colleagues who support them, are after. The chief bogeyman they want to flog is China's communist government, whichaccording to Schumer and the restdeliberately keeps its currency undervalued in order to sell more cheap imports to the United States and other countries. Reasonable economists differ on that question. The tariff, if you buy the argument, would bring prices on Chinese imports closer to their unsubsidized value, leveling the playing field for honest tradespeople in, say, New York and South Carolina, who can't possibly produce goods as cheaply as the Chinese and still earn enough wages to buy all the DVD and MP players that they need.
(Excerpt) Read more at usnews.com ...
Actually China has a trade deficient, just like the US.
Where's the pic of them holding hands?
South Carolina Ping
Add me to the list. / Remove me from the list.
Just for fun... gimme a source. Then I'll back up my assertion.
Joe MetalStamper can keep making 40 $/hr wages plus meds and pension...
Well said. I thought I was on the Socialist Worker webpage for a moment there. Tariffs don't make a product competitive; they worsen an already bad situation.
The biggest problem for automakers is that they have already sold everyone in
America a car or two. It is called market saturation. they had a slick plan to deal with that called planned obscelence, but Ralph Nader put a stop to that. Now cars cost a lot more and last a lot longer. It might have been better if union thugs had put out a contract on him, better for the UAW, that is.
Don't get me started on Nader. Unsafe at any speed, that guy.
If we boycott China, can I still have General Tso chicken?
Better to have that argument now while we still have a military advantage than 20 years from now when our entire manufacturing base is gone, and we have no leverage left.
Different times.
I will agree with the confused part.
Tariffs do nothing but worsen the situation.
Amen. Much different pumping money into the economies and government of Mexico or Japan than Comminist China, for Pete's sake!
Who protected Chrysler?
The US taxpayer to the tune of 13 billion in 1980. they still didn't make it. The government bailed them out the first time.
TIME magazine.Questions about whether a quick federal fix is rightand will be enough The Carter Administration decided last week that now was the time to come to the aid of the nation's most beleaguered major company. After weeks of rising pressure for a federal fix for the multiplying problems of Chrysler Corp., Treasury Secretary G. William Miller producedand Jimmy Carter approved a Government bailout. It was designed to prevent the nation's No. 3 automaker (1978 sales: $13.6 billion) from sliding into a bankruptcy that could have put many thousands out of work and sent a shudder...
Sombody gets it...
Why to help to pay for the costs of feeding,clothing,housing and caring for millions of illegal aliens of course....
It's good that you like inflation so much.
I'd prefer Congress over three judges in the WTO.
Yup. The Chinese have been playing the 'free-trade' game for several thousand years. Ever wonder how casinos in Vegas stay open there, free-traitors? It's because they rig the game. China's doing the same thing. If we don't wise-up to that fact real soon, we're going to end up rolling 'craps' as a country.
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