Posted on 03/26/2016 12:17:19 PM PDT by iowamark
But your side of the coin is all that is ever discussed: The Loss of Jobs We Can See. We can see that you lost your job and that jobs were lost by others in your profession.
But you never see any discussion of the Loss of Jobs That We Don't See When We Do Have Tariffs. That's what I'm talking about. No tariffs and you lost your job. Add tariffs and others will lose their jobs. That is the key point that is always overlooked.
Add in a big enough tariff to save your job and the others in your profession and here is what happens:
Prices rise in the impacted business and their customers spend less.
10 people get laid off at the Norwalk CA Walmart.
12 more at the Best Buy in Naples FL are laid off.
And 6 more at the K-Mart in Waterloo Iowa lose their jobs. And on, and on and on.
Repeat this for many, many products and the net result is an overall harm to the economy. That's just the way it is. Economics can be cruel but it is what it is.
Smart trade not stupid trade.
The didn’t give away the farm just to say they were trading.
You are correct. They may have been even a bit higher than that.
Your examples are valid, but please look at what you chose for examples.
Every one of the examples you thought were illustrative were low paying service jobs, which is precisely what has so greatly expanded as so much of our manufacturing has completely gone elsewhere. Those products no longer create income to be taxed in the US for either those businesses or employees and they no longer can encourage people to study for such jobs to help find ways to further improve those processes. Those products now create such benefits for China and elsewhere, and I expect that to happen (after all, if all the manufacturing and sales originates from a country, why shouldn’t it see all those benefits?).
We have 94 million people who are not working. A majority of net growth in employment for some 10+ years has been directly mapped to foreign emigration employment in the US (the numbers appear too consistent to think there’s another explanation). This means any expansion has not helped US citizens, but did help non-citizens (though they are possibly citizens by now) to get jobs.
http://www.cis.org/who-got-jobs-during-obama-presidency
Those 94 million are people who are not productively helping increase our GDP or encouraging the velocity of money to increase (to help the government receive more income simply from the turnover of monies through the system). This is not healthy, but I fear it will continue until a series of great changes occur.
I do not believe lower cost goods from China can possibly replace the total value lost in our economy, our work ethic, or our tax base. However, it would be much more likely to help if we had a tariff on such goods, while reducing the regulations and tax burdens, here.
Go ahead. Apply a tariff that takes $100 billion from Americans and gives it to Congress to spend. Good idea? I don't think so. Jobs will be saved in industries favored by the politicians but many more will be lost across the board.
I would argue that under your desired circumstances, we have the growth we have, and it’s not worth bragging about.
You are way too smart to make that argument. Tariffs have very little effect on our current economy as it stands. High Incomes Taxes and Over-Regulation are way more important. My position is that if you want to make things better you need to:
Reduce Government Spending at all levels.
Reduce Income and other taxes at all levels.
Get rid of requirements that burden industry and businesses.
If we could do that people would stop worrying about tariffs and start worrying about which new job offer they should accept.
OK, perhaps I exaggerate, but that would at least be the trend.
This gets back to what we tax, though. I suggest we choose to tax imports more and income less.
This is why I no longer read the WSJ, AKA The Cheap Labor Journal.
That might work. But you need a net reduction in taxes across a broad base.
Brett Stevens of the WSJ Editorial Board is going nuts over Trump
I completely agree.
Instead of being employed and taxed for 9 years until I reached retirement age of 66, I received unemployment for 2-1/2 years and schooling that cost $6000 through the TAA program. We went through our 401k when my husband was let go from his job 2 months before his 60th birthday. Now I’m back in school courtesy of student loans that I’ll pry never pay back fully due to death, and I just started collecting early SS at a lower benefit than expected vs full retirement. Over the last 5 years, I’ve gone from being a self-sufficient producer to a taker for the first time in my life. My Golden Years are no such thing, unfortunately. Thank God I have my health and my wonderful family.
Please see my comment #28. I’m a manufacturing worker who will get hit rather badly by the people who claim to be helping me, and who want the federal government to do so on their behalf.
Until Mexico puts a tariff on the return part, Ford (or whatever the company is) will still get your part at the exact same cost. Companies who need your part in the US will get it at the same price, but now their taxes are lower and they would profit from moving aspects of that Mexican build work back to the US.
I would expect, should the rest of the car still be built in Mexico, that subtracting the wholesale part of your part out of the car would allow the US tariff to be less than it would have been. We now know how much of a car has US parts, so this could work, but still be an annoyance.
Your income taxes will be reduced as well.
The part will likely be a higher quality part, as to date, US-made items still seem to have the advantage of being built by educated people. Such an educational base is not assured in Mexico, China, or Vietnam, so quality is always compromised in such locales. This higher quality part you make, with reduced costs to the business from regulatory and taxes being brought down, will become more competitive on the world market. Of course, other countries may choose to raise their own tariffs, but they may not.
The US has one of the highest corporate taxes in the world, by far. Greatly reducing that, coupled with a commensurate reduction in the repatriation tax to 4% or less, would bring us to parity with most civilized countries. It would also bring cash into the country for reinvestment or dividends at just the right time.
For a look the “expensive” cost of business in Canada, read this:
http://taxfoundation.org/blog/how-much-lower-are-canadas-business-taxes
We're not arguing, I just want you to see my point of view.
If it helps, we own a Ford hybrid made in Mexico. Keep up the good work!
My Ford, built about 2 miles away, has 40% Canadian and Mexican parts (including the German transmission). God Bless NAFTA, and Ronald Reagan, who brought it to us.
Don’t worry. They will be making the parts in Mexico or China soon. You can get retrained to stock shelves at Walmart and wait for the EBT card to be refilled.
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