3 ms·
I'm not going to quibble with you on this, because I think you're right, but I can think of a secondary use. A country with weak governance could use tariffs to
by analog31 2y ago
I'm not going to quibble with you on this, because I think you're right, but I can think of a secondary use. A country with weak governance could use tariffs to raise money because it's easy to manage at the point of entry, rather than requiring more sophisticated systems such as income or property value reporting.
This could explain why, for instance, poor countries use tariffs on goods that have no chance of building a local industry.
- xorcist 2y agoThis is also why some economists like them, they're hard to cheat on. Know what's even harder to cheat on and has much less long term impact on the economy? Sales tax. A federal sales tax would have been preferable to the import tax. But there are probably other political concerns at stake here.