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Coal to coke, a tax, iron ore to pig iron, add tax. Pig iron to steel, add tax, steel billets into shapes for the rolling mill, add tax, get the picture ? They can warp any production they like to suit the desires of a competitor or interest group or to punish an industry that didn't cheer for them. Oh, and don't forget the "value added" angle of what expected environmental impact according to Al Gore is at any point in the process.

You burned coal ? Well, the value of the cleanup has to be added in right up front because that's labor expended as a result of mining coal. Burning gasoline in your car ? Well, car owner has to pay for the labor lost to society because of air pollution because it's an indirect use of labor due to gasoline. Don't forget the cost of bathing ducks that has to be included in the mere moving of petroleum since that labor, therefore value, and has to be added when it arrives at the port. All sorts of hypothetical costs become real, taxable, "increases in value" and/or labor content a value can be put on.

It 's endless, and if you think the same gang that lords over the immense tax code would do anything less than an even worse maze of of paper you're nutz. A VAT requires a large tax machine to determine the details and Cruz knows that whether he claims something to the contrary or not. Politicians love a VAT tax because it allows them to bestow favors and punishments without anyone noticing anything and if they do, well, it's just a percent here and a quarter percent there on this one type of goods we had miscalculated in light of changing circumstances.

A VAT tax doesn't do what's claimed for it but is the Holy Grail for Globalists. Period.

The only thing close to what they claim a VAT tax would do is a national sales tax rather than an income tax with exemptions on basic food and clothing like Ohio and Pennsylvania once had. What those States have now I don't know, but at one time work clothes and basic clothing weren't taxed but dress clothes were. Same with food. Pasta, Oatmeal, rice, hamburger, I don't remember the list, but basics weren't taxed while dry cereals for kids, most frozen foods, ice cream, and so on were as they were a convenience or luxury, not a necessity.

Pat Buchanan has a couple of succinct chapters in The Great Betrayal, read the whole book, especially those chapters. There are whole books about how bad VAT has been for Europe, look em' up if what Buchanan says isn't convincing.