President Trump is right about taxing at our water’s edge.

[johnwk]

.

President Trump is spot on to promote tax policy, especially at our water’s edge, which advances America’s general welfare and common defense, just as our founding fathers did, and that would include a modern-day tax policy to insure America is not dependent upon foreign nations for steel or aluminum, both of which are vital in the production of America’s military needs.



The historical fact is, our founding fathers used taxes at our water’s edge to promote America’s best interests, and the use of these taxes were very much responsible for America becoming the economic marvel of the world, until our modern day Congress became infested with disloyal money hungry members who have sold their souls to international corporate giants who have no allegiance to America, and likewise have sold their souls to the U. S. Chamber of Commerce which now represents these international corporate giants and our global governance crowd.



Keep in mind when these free-trade globalist members in Congress talk about “free trade”, they are talking about international corporate giants being allowed to freely flood our market with untaxed cheap inferior goods, most of which are produced under slavish working conditions, while Congress then freely taxes and regulates to death America’s domestic manufactures, its industries and even taxes the property which working people have in their labor to fill our national treasury. I say “our” national treasury because our thieving traitors on Capitol Hill believe our national treasury is their personal ATM, and “free trade” is just another ticket for these thieves to rake in bribery money for passage of legislation beneficial to our globalist one world crowd.



By contrast, instead of taxing our domestic manufactures, industries and labor to fill our national treasury, our founding fathers taxed at our water’s edge and had foreigners paying for the privilege of doing business on America soil just as one buys a ticket to sell their goods and wares at a flea market!



Madison sums up our founding father’s taxing policy as follows during the creation of our Nation`s First Revenue Raising Act



“…a national revenue must be obtained; but the system must be such a one, that, while it secures the object of revenue it shall not be oppressive to our constituents.”



The Act went on to tax specifically chosen imported articles and not one dime was raised by taxing American domestic manufacturers, the working man’s wage, or the returns on invested capital ___ all of which contributed enormously to America becoming the economic marvel of the world! It should also be noted the Act was signed by George Washington on July 4th, 1789, as if to give England a second notice of America’s independence while exercising her power to tax foreign imports in order to fill our national treasury while promoting America’s general welfare and common defense.



In regard to promoting America’s common defense and in addition to imposing a specific amount of tax on specifically chosen articles imported, our founding fathers imposed an across-the-board tax on imports which was higher for imports arriving in foreign owned foreign built vessels, and discounted the tax for imports arriving in American owned American built ships:



"...a discount of ten percent on all duties imposed by this Act shall be allowed on such goods, wares, and merchandise as shall be imported in vessels built in the United States, and wholly the property of a citizen or citizens thereof." SEE: An Act imposing duties on Tonnage July 20, 1789




This patriotic use of taxing at our water’s edge not only filled our national treasury, but gave American ship builders a hometown advantage and predictably resulted in America's ship building industry to flourish and America’s merchant marine to become the most powerful on the face of the planet. Unfortunately, last time I visited the docks in New York's Hell's Kitchen area, I was saddened that I could no longer read the names on the docked ships as they all seemed to be foreign owned foreign built vessels...an irrefutable sign of America's decline traceable to the ravages of our international “free trade crowd” and a traitorous sellout of America’s sovereignty to the highest international bidders by members of Congress and our presidents of the past.




The bottom line is, President Trump is correct in wanting to insure America is not dependent upon foreign nations in the manufacturing of our military’s needs, just as he is correct in adopting a trade policy which is an America first policy. And those yap about such a policy creating a “trade war”, suspiciously ignore the existing trade war the United States has been in ever since the NAFTA was adopted, which in effect un-constitutionally transferred Congress’ [the people’s elected representatives] assigned duty to regulate trade with foreign nations, placing this assigned power in the hands of Binational Panels, who are not elected by the American People, a majority of whom are foreigners, and who represent the interests of international corporate giants who have no allegiance to America or any nation! And this is what our Global Governance Crowd and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce support ___ subjugating Congress’ power to regulate commerce with foreign nations with the idea of to advance an America First trade policy advantageous to America’s common defense and general welfare as its priority.




JWK




Without a Fifth Column Media, Yellow Journalism, Hollywood, and a corrupted FBI, Loretta Lynch, Hillary Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama, would be making license tags in a federal penitentiary

[Gumba of Liberty]

Of All the Forms of State Theft:

Sales Taxes
Income Taxes
Excise Taxes
Inflation Taxes (Printing Money)
Property Taxes
Stamp Taxes
Permission Taxes (Licensing)

Import Taxes (Tariffs) are the least intrusive for the American People and keep Leviathan at the edges (borders) of the/any country.

[TheTexan]

“…a national revenue must be obtained; but the system must be such a one, that, while it secures the object of revenue it shall not be oppressive to our constituents.”

Exactly right, taxes must find the right balance between oppressive and not-oppressive

so it's only moderately oppressive

[charrob]

I have so much respect for Ron Paul as he is by far the most principled congressperson I've watched, but this is where I part ways and disagree with him. Having American labor compete with Chinese slave labor is a race to the bottom for the U.S. middle class and working class (what's left of it). Below is a good article by Pat Buchanan. One idea beyond Buchanan would be to just have dynamic tariffs so that the overall trade we have with another country has a trade deficit of $0. That way we can continue trade with that country without losing manufacturing jobs. It also forces countries with slave labor and environmental degradation to lift themselves up and have better conditions for their workers and environment if they want to sell products in the U.S. So instead of a race to the bottom for labor and the environment, it lifts up everyone. I know that's not very popular here, but it's what I believe.

Why Is the GOP Terrified of Tariffs?

By Patrick J. Buchanan

From Lincoln to William McKinley to Theodore Roosevelt, and from Warren Harding through Calvin Coolidge, the Republican Party erected the most awesome manufacturing machine the world had ever seen.

And, as the party of high tariffs through those seven decades, the GOP was rewarded by becoming America’s Party.

Thirteen Republican presidents served from 1860 to 1930, and only two Democrats. And Grover Cleveland and Woodrow Wilson were elected only because the Republicans had split.

Why, then, this terror of tariffs that grips the GOP?

Consider. On hearing that President Trump might impose tariffs on aluminum and steel, Sen. Lindsey Graham was beside himself: “Please reconsider,” he implored the president, “you’re making a huge mistake.”

Twenty-four hours earlier, Graham had confidently assured us that war with a nuclear-armed North Korea is “worth it.”

“All the damage that would come from a war would be worth it in terms of long-term stability and national security,” said Graham.

A steel tariff terrifies Graham. A new Korean war does not?

“Trade wars are not won, only lost,” warns Sen. Jeff Flake.

But this is ahistorical nonsense.

The U.S. relied on tariffs to convert from an agricultural economy in 1800 to the mightiest manufacturing power on earth by 1900.

Bismarck’s Germany, born in 1871, followed the U.S. example, and swept past free trade Britain before World War I.

Does Senator Flake think Japan rose to post-war preeminence through free trade, as Tokyo kept U.S. products out, while dumping cars, radios, TVs and motorcycles here to kill the industries of the nation that was defending them. Both Nixon and Reagan had to devalue the dollar to counter the predatory trade policies of Japan.

Since Bush I, we have run $12 trillion in trade deficits, and, in the first decade in this century, we lost 55,000 factories and 6,000,000 manufacturing jobs.

Does Flake see no correlation between America’s decline, China’s rise, and the $4 trillion in trade surpluses Beijing has run up at the expense of his own country?

The hysteria that greeted Trump’s idea of a 25 percent tariff on steel and 10 percent tariff on aluminum suggest that restoring this nation’s economic independence is going to be a rocky road.

In 2017, the U.S. ran a trade deficit in goods of almost $800 billion, $375 billion of that with China, a trade surplus that easily covered Xi Jinping’s entire defense budget.

If we are to turn our $800 billion trade deficit in goods into an $800 billion surplus, and stop the looting of America’s industrial base and the gutting of our cities and towns, sacrifices will have to be made.

But if we are not up to it, we will lose our independence, as the countries of the EU have lost theirs.

Specifically, we need to shift taxes off goods produced in the USA, and impose taxes on goods imported into the USA.

As we import nearly $2.5 trillion in goods, a tariff on imported goods, rising gradually to 20 percent, would initially produce $500 billion in revenue.

All that tariff revenue could be used to eliminate and replace all taxes on production inside the USA.

As the price of foreign goods rose, U.S. products would replace foreign-made products. There’s nothing in the world that we cannot produce here. And if it can be made in America, it should be made in America.

Consider. Assume a Lexus cost $50,000 in the U.S., and a 20 percent tariff were imposed, raising the price to $60,000.

What would the Japanese producers of Lexus do?

They could accept the loss in sales in the world’s greatest market, the USA. They could cut their prices to hold their U.S. market share. Or they could shift production to the United States, building their cars here and keeping their market.

How have EU nations run up endless trade surpluses with America? By imposing a value-added tax, or VAT, on imports from the U.S., while rebating the VAT on exports to the USA. Works just like a tariff.

The principles behind a policy of economic nationalism, to turn our trade deficits, which subtract from GDP, into trade surpluses, which add to GDP, are these:

• Production comes before consumption. Who consumes the apples is less important than who owns the orchard. We should depend more upon each other and less upon foreign lands.
  
• We should tax foreign-made goods and use the revenue, dollar for dollar, to cut taxes on domestic production.
  
• The idea is not to keep foreign goods out, but to induce foreign companies to move production here.
  
• We have a strategic asset no one else can match. We control access to the largest richest market on earth, the USA.
  
• And just as states charge higher tuition on out-of state students at their top universities, we should charge a price of admission for foreign producers to get into America’s markets.

And — someone get a hold of Sen. Graham — it’s called a tariff.

https://buchanan.org/blog/gop-terrified-tariffs-128840

[Swordsmyth]

[nikcers]

fake news Trump is not getting rid of the income tax- Trump is just adding more taxes to consumers when he doesn't change spending or any other form of taxation and just adds taxes.

[Swordsmyth]

fake news Trump is not getting rid of the income tax- Trump is just adding more taxes to consumers when he doesn't change spending or any other form of taxation and just adds taxes.

Who knows what the future holds?

As the economy improves from defending ourselves in the trade wars revenue will go up and the income tax can be cut further and welfare spending can be shredded, this could be the beginning of a transition in our taxation methods.

[nikcers]

Who knows what the future holds?

As the economy improves from defending ourselves in the trade wars revenue will go up and the income tax can be cut further and welfare spending can be shredded, this could be the beginning of a transition in our taxation methods.

They won't ever remove taxes that are there, that's why even the tax cut was a fake tax cut because the taxes are only temporarily cut and they will go up and when they go up they will not pass any more tax cuts. They will pass tax increases any way they can, even if they can con you into thinking that its only temporary to transition out of income tax.

[timosman]

They won't ever remove taxes that are there, that's why even the tax cut was a fake tax cut because the taxes are only temporarily cut and they will go up and when they go up they will not pass any more tax cuts. They will pass tax increases any way they can, even if they can con you into thinking that its only temporary to transition out of income tax.

The sky is falling.

[thoughtomator]

fake news Trump is not getting rid of the income tax- Trump is just adding more taxes to consumers when he doesn't change spending or any other form of taxation and just adds taxes.

Posts like this are why I have come to believe that a good portion of the frequent users of this site have actual brain damage. I can count the number of respectable posters left here on one hand, without having to use the thumb.

[johnwk]

fake news Trump is not getting rid of the income tax- Trump is just adding more taxes to consumers when he doesn't change spending or any other form of taxation and just adds taxes.

JWK



Without a Fifth Column Media, Yellow Journalism, Hollywood, and a corrupted FBI, Loretta Lynch, Hillary Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama, would be making license tags in a federal penitentiary

[Anti Federalist]

Regardless of Trump and his faults, which are many, I support tariffs and am in favor of this, and always have been.

[Brett85]

I would be fine with abolishing all of the federal taxes we have now and replacing them with a 10% across the board tariff on all imports to fund a limited government. However, that isn't what we have now. What we have now with Trump's new policy is high tariffs in addition to already high federal tax rates. This will just end up being passed on to the consumer in the form of higher prices.

[Ender]

I would be fine with abolishing all of the federal taxes we have now and replacing them with a 10% across the board tariff on all imports to fund a limited government. However, that isn't what we have now. What we have now with Trump's new policy is high tariffs in addition to already high federal tax rates. This will just end up being passed on to the consumer in the form of higher prices.

It always has been. And the Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1929 basically confirmed the Great Depression.

From Thomas DiLorenzo:

As mentioned above, by 1860 England itself had moved to complete free trade; France sharply reduced her tariff rates in that very year; and Bastiat’s free-trade movement was spreading throughout Europe. Only the Northern United States was clinging steadfastly to seventeenth-century mercantilism.

After the war the Northern manufacturing interests who financed and controlled the Republican party (i.e., the old Whigs) were firmly in control and they “ushered in a long period of high tariffs. With the tariff of 1897, protection reached an average level of 57 percent.”31 This political plunder continued for about fifty years after the war, at which time international competition forced tariff rates down moderately. By 1913 the average tariff rate in the U.S. had declined to 29 percent.

But the same clique of Northern manufacturers was begging for “protection” and persisted until they got it when Herbert Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1929, which increased the average tariff rate on over 800 items back up to 59.1 percent.32 The Smoot-Hawley tariff spawned an international trade war that resulted in about a 50 percent reduction in total exports from the United States between 1929 and 1932.33 Poverty and misery was the inevitable result. Even worse, the government responded to these problems of its own creation with a massive increase in government intervention, which only produced even more poverty and misery and deprived Americans of more and more of their freedoms.

CONCLUSIONS

Since the seventeenth century all the great classical liberals have defended free trade and opposed trade restrictions. Trade restrictions are an attack on the institution of private property, interfere with the international division of labor that is the source of our prosperity, and are nothing less than an act of theft. As Murray Rothbard remarked:

“The impetus for protectionism comes not from preposterous theories, but from the quest for coerced special privilege and restraint of trade at the expense of efficient competitors and consumers. In the host of special interests using the political process to repress and loot the rest of us, the protectionists are among the most venerable. It is high time that we get them, once and for all, off our backs, and treat them with the righteous indignation they so richly deserve.”34

[EBounding]

[Sonny Tufts]

Choosing the tax base is always tricky. But the idea should be to raise the needed revenue with the least possible disruption of the market (there will always be some disruption whatever the tax system). Using taxes to protect selected domestic industries is wrong and simply increases the amount of crony capitalism that already exists.

[angelatc]

Of All the Forms of State Theft:

Sales Taxes
Income Taxes
Excise Taxes
Inflation Taxes (Printing Money)
Property Taxes
Stamp Taxes
Permission Taxes (Licensing)

Import Taxes (Tariffs) are the least intrusive for the American People and keep Leviathan at the edges (borders) of the/any country.

I agree but note they didn't repeal any existing taxes before implementing the tariffs.

[Superfluous Man]

Dear Troll,

Taxation is theft.

[bunklocoempire]

mandated middleman = LOL

lack of liberty

The answer is always more liberty. Fear is a snare, ya know.

Keep it simple for me, if Trump is right on this, please scale this down and show me how productive families in a neighborhood would be positively influenced by a third party coming to their town and mandating brand loyalty. I just don't see it.

"I want to trade with Floyd the barber"

"You can try to trade with Floyd the barber, but I'm going to use aggression to stimulate trade with Goober, because I have what's best in mind for you"

"Yes, I can see by your past and current actions that you most certainly have my best interests in mind"


Know what I mean?

[dannno]

mandated middleman = LOL

lack of liberty

The answer is always more liberty. Fear is a snare, ya know.

Keep it simple for me, if Trump is right on this, please scale this down and show me how productive families in a neighborhood would be positively influenced by a third party coming to their town and mandating brand loyalty. I just don't see it.

Families will be positively influence by lower tariffs globally so that we have the ability to produce and sell in new markets. You are only looking at one side of the coin. This is going to result in better deals.

We will have a more free market as a result of this, I can assure you. Trump knows wtf he is doing.

[bunklocoempire]

Families will be positively influence by lower tariffs globally so that we have the ability to produce and sell in new markets. You are only looking at one side of the coin. This is going to result in better deals.

We will have a more free market as a result of this, I can assure you. Trump knows wtf he is doing.

Can you show me how this works in Mayberry? A small scale example please.

I edited my previous post. This one too...

[bunklocoempire]

When is this okay?:

"I want to trade with Floyd the barber"

"You can try to trade with Floyd the barber, but I'm going to use aggression to stimulate trade with Goober, because I have what's best in mind for you"

"Yes, I can see by your past and current actions that you most certainly have my best interests in mind"

[Anti Federalist]

Dear Troll,

Taxation is theft.

Yes, it is.

So, until such time as we can either:

A - Have a revolution and violently depose the taxmen and their cronies and Quislings or:

B - Convince enough fellow citizens of this fact, then:

The fact is there will be tax of some kind, theft of some kind, enforced at the barrel of government gun.

So, the question then is: "How bad a form of robbery do I want to be subjected to"?

Tariffs are stealing my cigarette lighter.

Income taxes are a mugging at gunpoint and a beating.

Property taxes are a home invasion, where I am anally gang raped and sodomized, before being slowly tortured to death.

I'll take tariffs, thank you.

[Anti Federalist]

I don't agree completely, in fact, one of the primary reasons that those plants are here, creating millions and millions of dollars of wealth and wages is because of tariffs.

Still, a good read, and he is 100% on Uncle Sucker's safety and environmental fatwas.


Trump’s Tariff Turducken

https://www.ericpetersautos.com/2018...iff-turducken/

By eric - March 6, 201827690

Trump is getting heat for his threat to impose tariffs on “imported” cars in order to help American car companies. But what about all the “American” cars built outside America?

And what about the “import” brands that build their cars here?

GM and Ford and FiatChrysler have plants in Mexico. The American 1500 series trucks they build there are shipped here. They are objectively imported. Should they be tariffized?

Toyota has a yuge operation in California. Nissan builds its trucks in Tennessee. Honda has plants in Ohio. BMW builds SUVS in South Carolina. Are these “imported” cars? Should they receive protection from the “foreign” competition – even if the brand in question happens to have its corporate HQ here?

The fulsome scurvy truth is there’s no such thing as an “American” car – or an “imported” one. Not anymore.

Not as they used to be.

People outside the business don’t realize how international not just the car companies have become but also the cars – most of which wouldn’t run without common parts from Bosch (injectors) and Denso (electronics) and ZF (transmissions) and a bunch of others, regardless of the brand on the fender.

Cars are built to a global standard nowadays. Like it or not, it is what it is.

The current Ford Mustang, as a for-instance. It was specifically designed not just for America but also for Europe and other export markets. The influence of this works both ways. One way – in the case of the Mustang – is that it remained rear-wheel-drive. American Mustang buyers demand this – would revolt if Ford changed this to the more common front-wheel-drive layout. So, that stayed. But the Mustang also got a standard four cylinder engine – with a turbo – which was done to make the car more agreeable to European/export market buyers who have to deal with (among other things) gas prices twice as high as what we pay.

The point is, the architecture – an industry term – is global. Go visit a major automaker’s web page; read about it for yourself.

Nationalism is an anachronism, at least in terms of how cars are designed and built as well as where they are built.

Did you know that Jaguar (and Land Rover) are owned by an Indian conglomerate? They are British in heritage, but no longer English. Should they be hit with punitive taxes on account of this? How about all the Buicks GM builds in China? Speaking of that . . . who do you suppose owns Volvo these days? Hint: It’s not the Swedes.

The point here is that imposing tariffs based on who’s an “import” and who’s not is going to be yugely problematic. Trump is operating on the basis of a false premise – one that hasn’t existed in fact since at least the 1980s. In those days, one could at least speak accurately of imported and domestic cars. It is much harder to do so today without it just being idiot demagoguery cynically calculated to inflame the boobs who don’t know any better. Who think, for instance, that their all-American truck was actually made in American rather than hecho en Mexico.

The real problem – which Trump could address without resorting to idiot demagoguery – is not “unfair trade” but stupid (and morally unjustifiable) regulations emanating from Washington. For instance, Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency (CAFE) regs which raise the cost of cars in order to make them use less gas. Which in the first place is none of the government’s proper business.

It’s your car. And in the second place, it’s your gas.

You pay for both. Which makes it no more the government’s business than where you choose to eat and how much you choose to eat. People would get their backs up about the latter – if the government began decreeing where they were allowed to eat – and telling them how much they could eat. It’s the same principle.

CAFE has made cars cost literally thousands of dollars more than they otherwise would. Far more than they do as the result of “unfair” trade. This is not conjecture. It’s verifiable fact. CAFE – the pressure to make every car an economy car, in terms of its average fuel consumption – has pushed the car manufacturers (“foreign” and “domestic”) to add direct injection in place of port fuel injection and put transmissions with nine and ten speeds in ordinary family cars. These “save gas” – but cost money.

Our money.

And that makes it our business – not Uncle’s.

Getting Uncle out of the business of dictating mandatory minimum MPGs would be a boon to everyone, import and domestic alike. It might result in more “gas guzzlers” being made. But that doesn’t mean fuel-efficient cars wouldn’t be available – so long as natural market demand exists for them. It just means the government would no longer be in the business of punishing those who have different demands.

Another productive thing Trump could do would be to get the government out of the “safety” business – which is also none of the government’s business. It is important to define our terms here. We are not talking about defective cars or cars that aren’t roadworthy. Just cars that don’t meet the government’s arbitrary criteria regarding how well they withstand crashing into things.

This, again, is properly our business.

Once upon a time, it was. People could choose very efficient – and very light – cars that maybe couldn’t take a broadside as well as a Cadillac Sedan deVille but also didn’t cost as much as a Sedan deVille and used a lot less gas, too.

The government took those choices away. Trump could give them back.

And unlike the idiotic tariff threats he’s making – which would hurt the car business as well as car buyers – getting Uncle out of the MPG and “safety” business would help everyone.

Well, except for the useless eaters in Washington – who make a fat living inserting themselves into things which are none of their got-damned business.

[Superfluous Man]

So, the question then is: "How bad a form of robbery do I want to be subjected to"?

Tariffs are stealing my cigarette lighter.

Income taxes are a mugging at gunpoint and a beating.

Property taxes are a home invasion, where I am anally gang raped and sodomized, before being slowly tortured to death.

I'll tariffs, thank you.

I have no problem with your position. But that is not the position of the OP, which instead claims that taxation by way of tariffs is a positive good, and that it would be a bad thing to deprive the federal government of all revenue, since it needs money to advance America's general welfare and common defense.

Johnwk rejects the claim that you and I agree on that taxation is theft.

[dannno]

Can you show me how this works in Mayberry? A small scale example please.

John owns a tomato stand in Mayberry. He sells tomatoes for $1.99/lb.

Each day, Nick comes by to buy some tomatoes. He negotiates with John a special price of $1.79.

Florence comes in to buy tomatoes each day. She wears a shirt that has a pin that says, "I NEVER NEGOTIATE OR SHOP AROUND".

John decides to raise the price to $2.49/lb.

When Nick comes in, he says, "Hey, what about the deal we had? Is that still valid?"

John says, "Yes, of course it is."

Florence comes in and starts paying $2.49 for her tomatoes.

Years go by.

One day Nick and Florence go on a date and discuss their daily tomato purchases.

Nick convinces Florence to take the pin that says, "I NEVER NEGOTIATE OR SHOP AROUND" when she goes into the store next time.

When John sees the changes, he gets worried and the next day lowers his prices back down to $1.99.

Florence comes in the next day, sees the price drop and still negotiates a price of $1.79/lb with John.

The point is, if you wear your decision not to negotiate or shop around on your sleeve, people will take advantage of you and raise your prices.

As soon as you are willing to take it off and negotiate, you will get better deals.

[bunklocoempire]

John owns a tomato stand in Mayberry. He sells tomatoes for $1.99/lb.

Each day, Nick comes by to buy some tomatoes. He negotiates with John a special price of $1.79.

Florence comes in to buy tomatoes each day. She wears a shirt that has a pin that says, "I NEVER NEGOTIATE OR SHOP AROUND".

John decides to raise the price to $2.49/lb.

When Nick comes in, he says, "Hey, what about the deal we had? Is that still valid?"

John says, "Yes, of course it is."

Florence comes in and starts paying $2.49 for her tomatoes.

Years go by.

One day Nick and Florence go on a date and discuss their daily tomato purchases.

Nick convinces Florence to take the pin that says, "I NEVER NEGOTIATE OR SHOP AROUND" when she goes into the store next time.

When John sees the changes, he gets worried and the next day lowers his prices back down to $1.99.

Florence comes in the next day, sees the price drop and still negotiates a price of $1.79/lb with John.

The point is, if you wear your decision not to negotiate or shop around on your sleeve, people will take advantage of you and raise your prices.

As soon as you are willing to take it off and negotiate, you will get better deals.

You can try to trade with Floyd the barber, but I'm going to use aggression to stimulate trade with Goober, because I have what's best in mind for you.

That is what you are trying to sell. Nothing more.

[charrob]

It always has been. And the Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1929 basically confirmed the Great Depression.

One big difference between then and now is that our country had a trade surplus when Smoot-Hawley was implemented on June 17, 1930 so imho adding tariffs made no sense; since Bush 1, we've lost $12 trillion in trade deficits and our manufacturing industries have been completely gutted followed by the gutting of wealth of the middle and working classes.

As mentioned in my post above: Having American labor compete with Chinese slave labor is a race to the bottom for the U.S. middle class and working class (what's left of it). ... One idea beyond Pat Buchanan would be to just have dynamic tariffs so that the overall trade we have with another country has a trade deficit of $0; once there's a trade surplus, the tariffs come off. That way we can continue trade with that country without losing manufacturing jobs.

Not sure I agree with choosing products (although i can understand Trump's interest in steel for defense purposes); overall bilateral trade should have a trade deficit of $0. Let the market decide which country in a trade relationship makes which widgets better and more efficiently.

Milton Friedman held the opinion that the Smoot–Hawley tariff of 1930 did not cause the Great Depression, instead he blamed the lack of sufficient action on the part of the Federal Reserve. [The Great Depression According to Milton Friedman: The Great Depression Could Have Been Avoided if the Fed Had Not So Badly Botched Its Monetary Policy.]

Douglas A. Irwin wrote: "most economists, both liberal and conservative, doubt that Smoot–Hawley played much of a role in the subsequent contraction."

Peter Temin, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, explained that a tariff is an expansionary policy, like a devaluation as it diverts demand from foreign to home producers. He noted that exports were 7 percent of GNP in 1929, they fell by 1.5 percent of 1929 GNP in the next two years and the fall was offset by the increase in domestic demand from tariff. He concluded that contrary the popular argument, contractionary effect of the tariff was small. (Temin, P. 1989. Lessons from the Great Depression, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass)

William Bernstein wrote "most economic historians now believe that only a minuscule part of that huge loss of both world GDP and the United States' GDP can be ascribed to the tariff wars "because trade was only nine percent of global output, not enough to account for the seventeen percent drop in GDP following the Crash. He thinks the damage done could not possibly have exceeded 2 percent of world GDP and tariff "didn't even significantly deepen the Great Depression." (A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World)

Nobel laureate Maurice Allais maintained that tariff was rather helpful in the face of deregulation of competition in the global labor market and excessively loose credit prior to the Crash which, according to him, caused the crisis in financial and banking sectors. He noted higher trade barriers were partly a means to protect domestic demand from deflation and external disturbances. He observes domestic production in the major industrialized countries fell faster than international trade contracted; if contraction of foreign trade had been the cause of the Depression, he argues, the opposite should have occurred. So, the decline in trade between 1929 and 1933 was a consequence of the Depression, not a cause. Most of the trade contraction took place between January 1930 and July 1932, before the introduction of the majority of protectionist measures, excepting limited American measures applied in the summer of 1930. It was the collapse of international liquidity that caused of the contraction of trade.

The one worry as I see it is the current extent of the damage to our manufacturing base. Not only have we lost since Bush 1 the skills of our manufacturing workforce, but as i see it, even more importantly, when most of our manufacturing was offshored to China, they didn't just close down the factories. They literally exported most of the huge machinery inside those factories to China as well. So we're literally starting from scratch. We have to build the machines the factories use in creating their products. This takes investment and a great deal of time. Certainly the positive affects of a resurging middle & working class for the country will not be fully attained in the next 3 years of Trump's reign, and may only begin to see signs of positive change by 2024 if he wins in 2020. As Buchanan wrote, it will take some pain to get there. Certainly the greatest pain would be felt by retired workers who would be living on pensions of a less prosperous time. But if allowed, certainly in time the middle and working classes will once again begin to grow and prosper. As Buchanan writes, the alternative is losing our independence; i would also add if trade deficits continue as they have, we will also continue to lose our prosperity in the race to the bottom as our workers continue to compete with slave labor in China and other 3rd world countries.

[dannno]

You can try to trade with Floyd the barber, but I'm going to use aggression to stimulate trade with Goober, because I have what's best in mind for you.

That is what you are trying to sell. Nothing more.

No no, the way I've explained it is that there will be more trade with Floyd the barber because there will be less taxes going the other direction.. Let me simplify..

Let's say there is a 40% tax for Mayberry residents to sell anything outside of Mayberry, and no taxes for people to buy things from outside Mayberry in Mayberry.

Well, clearly people are going to buy things from inside or outside Mayberry, but they will only be able to sell to each other and don't have access to sell in any outside markets.

Mayberry was rich, and they become more poor over time because they can't produce and sell goods to markets outside Mayberry.

So Trump comes a long and says, "Hey, I'm going to make it so you guys get to sell to outside markets with only a 5% tax, but you will also have a 5% tax on goods coming into Mayberry."

Now people can buy and sell goods inside or outside Mayberry, although unfortunately there is still some tax, it is a much lower amount that will be paid in total, about a quarter the amount of taxes.

[johnwk]

It always has been. And the Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1929 basically confirmed the Great Depression.

What exactly do you mean "confirmed" the Great Depression?


JWK




Without a Fifth Column Media, Yellow Journalism, Hollywood, and a corrupted FBI, Loretta Lynch, Hillary Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama, would be making license tags in a federal penitentiary