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 course—they 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, which—according to Schumer and the rest—deliberately 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 ...
One important question, IMHO, is how much money a government will take in taxes if:
Can anyone explain any problems in my theory?
Tariffs and protectionism are more of a socialist nature.
We need tarrifs for unfrair trade engaged by China, so that China will be forced to change the value of Yuan and force fair trade.
"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"
If you want to protect the working man, then don't interfere when we finally get the opportunity to be able to afford stuff you wealthier people take for granted. I love Wal-mart it has improved my living standard. Unemployment is around 4.7% which is extraordinarily low. When you combine a job with low priced goods, that is a good thing. Ignore the old rust belt bosses and archaic economic thinking, if you raise that price, then I have to go without, and that is a real ,immediate fact, screw your chauvinist ideas that Americans, just have to make shoes or the world will end.
Not always. It could also be a form of patriotism, and to protect fair trade, so that healthy competition will be availible. The value of Yuan is set wrong, and the COMMUNIST China has not changed the value much despite warnings from US. We are facing an unhealthy and unfair trade, benifitting China that fills COMMUNIST China's pocket with money to have them build more advanced military equipments that could threat our country.
The root of the word protectionism, is "protect".
Someone has to protect American industry, before we don't have any more.
Seriously.
They probably will. We have a stronger economy than they do, and ultimately it will do mor damage to them. I'd be happy to trade with them just like any other country -- when they behave like any other country and stop trying to attakc us militarily and economically.
Most people would not care about a $25 surcharge for an item they may get once every 5 years. The truth is "free" trade is a political loser, with people who are against it being very strongly against it, and most people who are for it being at best, lukewarm in their support.
Smoot-Hawley. It helped cause the Depression, although the liberal media will never let you know that.
Protecting yourself against those who seek to attack and destroy you is something different from merely protecting yourself from economic competition.
GM sells many cars in China and is building more plants in China.. Buick is the biggest seller.
How would they add tariffs to already pirated american imports? That's what they've been warned against--they can find an internet user who googles "democracy" but not whole bootleg/knockoff factories.
But the rest of us can't be bothered to pay a few dollars extra for consumer goods.
So, when do you think the Pat Tillmans of the world will see that the only thing that matters is lower prices to consumers?
In the world to come, explain that to him. I'd like to hear what you say.
Nothing helped lengthen the Depression like the New Deal. In 1936, things were worse than in 1932, and in 1940 they weren't any better. Then FDR got lucky and we got attacked. The resulting war rescued the economy, and Democrats have always given the New Deal credit, evne though all ti di was make the destruction worse.
Oh please, give me a break. The unemployment rate by historical standards(meaning how it was measured pre 1990s) is more like 7%, using the U-6 BLS numbers rather than the U-3 they use today. Also with DVD players, an item people get once every five years, a 25% surcharge would work out to 3 cents a day, big whoop.
At hwat cost should we follow "free" trade as it siezes upward mobility up and continues to put down ward pressue on wages? The US economy the last several years has not been moving forward becaue of wage increases, it has gone forward because of home re-fis, and re fis have ben all but exhusted.
The problem so many mainstream "Conservatives" can not think beyond what Limbaugh tells them to think. I have yet to hear one logical arguement for "free" trade as it is structured now, not one.
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