“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.
The unions are a problem but that is something that the companies need to deal with, not Trump. Michigan is a RTW state as far as I know. I think that should make it easier to get free of the unions. Too bad that Obama interfered in 2008 and kept GM and Chrysler from going under and restructuring. That would have been a good opportunity to bring the UAW under control.
I applaud your final statement.
My wife and I agree.