I lived in Germany for a long time and I know they put a 10% customs charge and add VAT (currently 19% ) on all our products sold there. I know that is not technically a tariff but it seems to me that it serves the same purpose by making our products much more expensive there. Other countries do the same. I think we should return the favor to make it fair. Putting 29% on all German products until they drop their charges on our stuff would be cool with me, as would charging other countries whatever fees they add to our products. I think onerous and costly EPA and NHTSA mandates had as much to do with almost killing our auto industry in the 1970s as any tariffs we may have had.
Yes, that’s the stuff that should be negotiated—and can only effectively be negotiated in old-fashioned, bilateral deals. Mexico, as I understand it, has upped their internal equivalent from 5% to 16%, through two hikes, since we signed NAFTA.
“I lived in Germany for a long time and I know they put a 10% customs charge and add VAT (currently 19% ) on all our products sold there. “
South Korea and China and Japan do the same thing. In China you have to actually have a Chinese partner to open a business there. The Japanese have actually gotten better by at least building some of their products in the US but the others have not.
The real issue with China is that some of the industrial products they make are from state subsidized factories and they then dump products at below cost into a market to ruin native industries in other places making the other places dependent upon Chinese goods. They’ve done this all over Asia. The South Koreans do it too.
I think it is a false argument to some extent to say that Trump wants closed markets. I think what he is really after is what should be called equitable trade which means that countries do not dump products at below cost by exploiting workers, currency manipulation or both.
The Chinese certainly did that with steel.
In such cases, especially where an industry is important to national defense a protective tariff is appropriate.
My issue with the Trump tariff talk is that he needs to turn the coin over and go after the excesses of the Unions. He was right when early in his campaign he said that part of the problem is that some people make too much. Minimum wage is too high and some union contracts are to, for lack of a better word, generous. Unions need to quit the Marxist “Us versus Management” rhetoric and truly work for the best for both the company and the workers. Compare for example, the wages between the non-Union Toyota assembly plants and the union GM plants. If Toyota had to pay United Auto Workers scale they’d move to Mexico too.
Given all that - I’d rather pay more for products than pay the taxes to keep people on welfare.