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Let's just call it what it is - a national sales tax. The only way significant bottom-up manufacturing ecosystems would come back to the US would be through tar
by mindslight 2y ago
Let's just call it what it is - a national sales tax. The only way significant bottom-up manufacturing ecosystems would come back to the US would be through targeted government investment, long term stability, and effective anti-trust enforcement - all things beyond the current administration. If three decades of economic neoliberalism was a steamroller crushing our industrial base, the Trumpist solution is to just throw it in reverse and destroy what domestic industry had managed to spring up in its wake.
I would have thought that despite the general comfort with hypocrisy of the larger Republican party, they would at least have reacted against overtly raising taxes especially to levels of hundreds of percent. But nope, use one synonym and whatever Dear Leader says goes. It's truly a cult.
- andsoitis 2y agoTariffs are also fertile ground for corruption.
- energy123 2y agoCase in point: Apple's exemption
- litoE 2y agoTariffs motivate smuggling. Smugglers corrupt the government's tax authorities so they will look the other way. Consumers who buy the cheaper product know full well it's smuggled goods. Conclusion: tariffs corrupt all of society. I saw this first hand growing up in South America with tariffs on all imported goods.
- carlosjobim 2y agoHow many American houses are built in China? How much American rice is grown in China? How much American lumber is chopped in China? How much American electricity is produced in China?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- andsoitis 2y agoSince the tariffs target the whole world, my responses look at imports rather than constraining to China. > How many American houses are built in China? Roughly 30% of the softwood lumber consumed in the US is imported, and Canada accounts for over 80% of those imports. Other key suppliers include China, Brazil, and Mexico. And that’s just lumber. The US now imports 1.5 million metric tons of rice. See trend: https://www.statista.com/statistics/806643/us-rice-import-volume/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/806643/us-rice-import-vo... > How much American electricity is produced in China? Generating and distributing electricity requires equipment. More expensive (or hard to acquire) equipment means more expensive energy, affecting just about everything.
- alabastervlog 2y agoAlso: some US electricity actually is produced in Canada. One option that seemed to be seriously considered early in this whole dust-up was Canada cutting off electricity supplied to the US. It would've caused chaos in the Northeast. I think they only pulled back from doing that because it probably would have fairly-directly killed quite a few people.
- carlosjobim 2y agoThat begs the question why electricity is cheaper in many countries which have the highest tariffs in the world? My original questions were of course rhetorical, shining a light on the matter that neither the US nor any country in the world lives only on imported goods. Since the economy, trade, and production is completely interconnected in a modern, industrialized world, then any changes in policy will have widespread effects. Including good effects.
- bloomingeek 2y agoMaybe your MAGA hat's brim is pulled down too low? There's a real, beautiful world out there if you're willing to see it. Knowledge is a good first step to beauty!
- thunderfork 2y agoSomething important to consider re: comparisons to a "sales tax": a sales tax applies to every unit you sell, a tariff applies even to the units you don't sell. This is a small distinction with some fun inflationary effects.
- matthewdgreen 2y agoThe more ideological parts of the GOP (like the Heritage Institute) have been pushing for consumption taxes as a replacement for the income tax for more years than I can remember. At least since the 2000s. (Just Google the phrase and just about any year since 2003.) It’s always been a bad and regressive idea. With that said, Trump has loved tariffs since the 1980s and so any similarity between the two plans is more a marriage of convenience than any careful plan.
- rsynnott 2y agoIt's worse than a national sales tax; sales taxes generally only apply to finished goods. Tariffs also apply to manufacturing inputs.