When you buy a foreign made import you are are actually hiring foreign nationals to build, assemble, ship that product. You are picking foreign workers over Americans. That is the reality of what is happening with trade. Those foreign workers are not paying income taxes to uncle Sam and those imports come in duty free! OTH our workers are burdened with regs and taxes. THIS IS EVIL!!!!! Free Traitors™ aren't just wrong they are doing something I consider evil.
Consumption taxes, especially the tariff is the fairest most conservative tax of all. Liberalizations and Republican should be in favor of them. They can be used a propaganda foil to assuage the stupid deficit hawks and their zero sum income tax game.
Why does the rest of the world almost universally practice protectionism? And name a country with lower average tariff rates than the USA.
Adam Smith never envisioned multi national corporations closing factories in England and moving production to the third world to exploit cheap labor and then re importing the same product back into England duty free! Smith would have been hung for that. That is not Free Trade. That is f--k trade.
This one is not mine: "I keep asking the establishment shills why America has some moral obligation to tolerate foreign countries imposing higher tariffs upon us than we impose upon them. Seems facially unfair, right? So, there’s got to be a really good reason because how can you support our working people facing a higher obstacle to trade than the foreigners do? I’m just wondering what’s wrong with a level playing field. Fair is fair, right? But I never get a good answer."
The rest of the world practices protectionism. The rest of the world charges really high import tariff on our exports, the rest of the world operates with a trade surplus. So there must be something good about import tariffs. So you point out all the possible negative aspects of raising our import tariff to be more in line with the rest of the worlds tariff rates but can you name ONE thing good about raising tariffs? Intellectual honesty would be appreciated. (but not expected).
What would economists in the EU, China, EVERYWHERE but the USA, have to say to you about that? When EVERY other country practices mercantilism/protectionism how can you possible call me an anachronism? Seems the rest of the world DOES NOT AGREE!
The Republicans are the party of globalist corporate power and want cheap labor and marginally higher profits by any means, thru legal and illegal immigration or by simply offshoring entire industries to the third world. The Democrats are simply socialists and want the immigration and could care less about the impact Republican globalist polices have on us wages and worker. SO THERE IS NO CONFLICT.
Both parties represent tiny fractions of the electorate but have taken over all political power, freezing out the commoner.
If you asked economists from the EU, S. Korea, Japan, Vietnam, India, China or Taiwan whether the protectionist tariffs, tariffs all of them use against the USA’s imports to their respective nations, were beneficial to their countries economy and in general a great thing, what would they tell you?
RE: When you buy a foreign made import you are are actually hiring foreign nationals to build, assemble, ship that product. You are picking foreign workers over Americans. That is the reality of what is happening with trade.
And you are saying that American businesses should NEVER, EVER build, assemble, ship their products overseas AT ALL?
That everything that has to be made must be made here?
That it is treasonous to even contemplate making a product elsewhere?
RE: And name a country with lower average tariff rates than the USA.
Switzerland, Dubai, Singapore and Hongkong come to mind.
American workers are not a factor. We spend money to get value for the $$$ spent. Overpaying just to pay americans who are not competative is not capitalism. You are a good socialist and must be happy with Bernie et al who spout your marxist/socialist garbage all the time
The reason there is competition from all over the world is that the workers are competative. We are near full employment and factories are producing lots of goods they can competitively sell. America is manufacturing all sorts of high priced excellent quality technologically superior products.
Riddle me this — When an American purchases an Apple Computer, it does not represent the U.S. Congress’ trading with the Chinese government. It represents an American citizen’s engaging in peaceable, voluntary exchange, through intermediaries, with a Chinese computer assembler. When voluntary exchange occurs, it means that both parties are better off in their own estimation — not Trump’s estimation or Dell’s estimation. I’d like to hear the moral case for third-party interference with such an exchange.
And think about it, by trying to save jobs for one industry, have you ever considered the increased prices that flow on to consumers ( yes, AMERICAN CONSUMERS ) causing them to have less money in their pockets?
Let’s delve a bit into the politics of trade tariffs. Whom do we see spending the most resources lobbying for tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum? Is it American users of steel and aluminum, such as Harley-Davidson and John Deere? Or is it United States Steel Corp. and Alcoa?
Of course it’s U.S. Steel and Alcoa. They benefit from tariffs by being able to sell their products at higher prices. Harley-Davidson and John Deere lose by having to pay higher prices for their inputs, steel and aluminum, and their customers lose by having to pay higher product prices.
The ruse used to promote producer interests through tariff policy is concern about our large trade deficit. It’s true that we have a large current account trade deficit. However, that’s matched EXACTLY BY A LARGE CAPITAL ACCOUNT SURPLUS.
Translated, that means Americans buy more goods from other countries than they buy from us; that’s our current account deficit. But other countries find our investment climate attractive and invest more in the U.S. than we invest in other countries; that’s our CAPITAL ACCOUNT SURPLUS.
Have you ever wondered why foreigners (yes, Chinese included) are willing to invest far more money in NY, Texas and California than they are willing to invest in Argentina and Venezuela?
Do you think it’s because they like North Americans better than they like South Americans? No. We’ve always had an attractive investment climate, and we’ve had current account deficits and capital account surpluses throughout most of our nation’s history. In fact, the only time we had a sustained current account trade surplus was during the Great Depression, when we had a surplus in nine out of 10 years, with 1936 being the lone exception.