Posted on 05/14/2019 2:20:31 PM PDT by cba123
As his limo carried him to work at the White House Monday, Larry Kudlow could not have been pleased with the headline in The Washington Post: "Kudlow Contradicts Trump on Tariffs."
The story began: "National Economic Council Director Lawrence Kudlow acknowledged Sunday that American consumers end up paying for the administration's tariffs on Chinese imports, contradicting President Trump's repeated inaccurate claim that the Chinese foot the bill."
A free trade evangelical, Kudlow had conceded on Fox News that consumers pay the tariffs on products made abroad that they purchase here in the U.S. Yet that is by no means the whole story.
A tariff may be described as a sales or consumption tax the consumer pays, but tariffs are also a discretionary and an optional tax.
If you choose not to purchase Chinese goods and instead buy comparable goods made in other nations or the USA, then you do not pay the tariff.
(please see full article, at the link)
(Excerpt) Read more at cnsnews.com ...
There was a continuum of Jew-bashing that went like this ...
Pat Buchanan > Robert Novak > Joe Sobran > David Duke
Andrew McCarthy...worked for the Justice Dept for many years. Was an unabashed apologist for the FBI and Jim Comey...until he got past the assumption that both were incorruptible. Our assumptions blind us, and the more accomplished we are the more deeply rooted those assumptions are.
Kudlow is spouting boilerplate. Free trade, free trade, free trade...except what we have with China is not fair trade. "Free trade, free trade, free trade!" in this situation is destructive and counter productive. Getting the ChiComs to exercise free trade is the only winning strategy. Yes, it will involve pain...in this case, not so much for consumers but for the producers hit with counter tariffs.
We laugh when RATs engage in static analysis in regard to taxes. In the case of tariffs, many conservatives commit the same mistake. 25% tariffs on any item will not flow through to consumers.
Care to discuss?
Patrick is 100% correct: the revenue for the nascent United States was almost 100% obtained from tariffs, with supplemental revenue from the Federal whiskey tax ...
Get ready for more.
Onlya if you believe static analysis is valid.
Kudlow is yet another example of the biggest problem in the Trump White House: the fact that his administration and senior advisors are almost to a man people who are opposed to Trump's own stated agenda on the issues (trade, immigration, foreign policy) that got Trump elected.
Often the strongest opposition to implementing Trump's agenda isn't Congressional Democrats or even Never-Trump Republicans, it's his own staff and administration.
Fortunately, the China tariff went through in spite of people like Kudlow, but why have someone like him there to begin with?
Here's some fresh data from the Fed you'll want to ignore...
Industrial production falls 0.5% amid big decline in auto output
Ignore? What’s the point?
I don't have a problem with a tariff applied to retaliate against other countries that don't allow American products to be fairly priced.
And I don't have a problem with a tariff which is across the board and applied to all foreign products evenly for the purposes of raising general revenue.
What I do have a problem with are specific tariffs on specific products, targeted to protect the politically influential and big donors (sugar, steel, etc) from having to compete.
Then we need to deregulate American companies so they can better compete.
Tariffs on specific products that are subsidized so that we are not on a level playing field are exactly the right approach.
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