Posted on 02/07/2018 9:00:48 AM PST by mac_truck
Americans are increasingly supportive of tariffs on cheap, imported goods from foreign countries to protect American industries and workers against wild globalization. In a poll by Rasmussen Reports, roughly 50 percent of Americans said the federal government should “place tariffs on goods from countries that pay very low wages to their workers,” as opposed to only 26 percent of Americans who said tariffs should not be imposed on foreign countries.
About 24 percent of Americans said they were “not sure” if the government should use tariffs to protect American industries.
Additionally, a plurality of Americans, about 44 percent, said the federal government is not doing “enough” to protect U.S. manufacturers and businesses from foreign competition” from globalization which has been exacerbated by endless multinational free trade agreements supported by the Democratic and Republican party establishments.
he support for protective tariffs has increased from two years ago, in 2015, when 47 percent of Americans polled by Rasmussen Reports said the federal government should place tariffs on foreign countries dumping cheap, imported products in the U.S.
In that 2015 poll, a plurality of Americans, about 40 percent, said free trade agreements like NAFTA and KORUS “take jobs away” from Americans.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Not so...
“James Monroe
In 1822, President James Monroe observed that “whatever may be the abstract doctrine in favor of unrestricted commerce,” the conditions necessary for its success—reciprocity and international peace—”has never occurred and can not be expected.” Monroe said, “strong reasons… impose on us the obligation to cherish and sustain our manufactures.”
Abraham Lincoln
President Abraham Lincoln declared, “Give us a protective tariff and we will have the greatest nation on earth.” Lincoln warned that “the abandonment of the protective policy by the American Government… must produce want and ruin among our people.”
Lincoln similarly said that, “if a duty amount to full protection be levied upon an article” that could be produced domestically, “at no distant day, in consequence of such duty,” the domestic article “will be sold to our people cheaper than before.”
Additionally, Lincoln argued that based on economies of scale, any temporary increase in costs resulting from a tariff would eventually decrease as the domestic manufacturer produced more.
Lincoln did not see a tariff as a tax on low-income Americans because it would only burden the consumer according to the amount the consumer consumed. By the tariff system, the whole revenue is paid by the consumers of foreign goods… the burthen of revenue falls almost entirely on the wealthy and luxurious few, while the substantial and laboring many who live at home, and upon home products, go entirely free.
Lincoln argued that a tariff system was less intrusive than domestic taxation: The tariff is the cheaper system, because the duties, being collected in large parcels at a few commercial points, will require comparatively few officers in their collection; while by the direct tax system, the land must be literally covered with assessors and collectors, going forth like swarms of Egyptian locusts, devouring every blade of grass and other green thing.[15]
William McKinley
President William McKinley stated the United States’ stance under the Republican Party as:
Under free trade the trader is the master and the producer the slave. Protection is but the law of nature, the law of self-preservation, of self-development, of securing the highest and best destiny of the race of man[16]. [It is said] that protection is immoral.... Why, if protection builds up and elevates 63,000,000 [the U.S. population] of people, the influence of those 63,000,000 of people elevates the rest of the world. We cannot take a step in the pathway of progress without benefiting mankind everywhere. Well, they say, ‘Buy where you can buy the cheapest’.... Of course, that applies to labor as to everything else. Let me give you a maxim that is a thousand times better than that, and it is the protection maxim: ‘Buy where you can pay the easiest.’ And that spot of earth is where labor wins its highest rewards.[17]
[Free trade] destroys the dignity and independence of American labor… It will take away from the people of this country who work for a living—and the majority of them live by the sweat of their faces—it will take from them heart and home and hope. It will be self-destruction.[18]<”
The US have never practiced Free Trade.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariffs_in_United_States_history#Abraham_Lincoln
The philosophical pronouncements of Monroe, Lincoln, and McKinley do not preclude America’s prospering market economy in the 1800’s which was mostly free from government interference and in which the average American was better off than anyone anywhere else.
Government has always distrusted freedom because by definition freedom is the ABSENCE of government. People all over the world risk their lives and often die for freedom. Freedom is a God-given desire and right. Freedom is worth fighting and dying for. And freedom is what made America great.
Those pronouncements were a reflection of the trade reality.
The US derived 95% of all its revenue from tariff on imported goods until 1913. Of these were blanket tariffs...a flat 20% being one example. Sometimes targeted.
But never absent.
And that includes the 1800s, your contrary contention notwithstanding.
Additionally, I challenge you to cite a single example of a large nation-state which has practiced Smithsonian free trade...ever in human history.
I never said the 1800’s were absent tariffs, only that they were relatively insignificant with government spending below 10% the GDP. I also said tariffs for government revenue is a valid use - MUCH better than the income tax.
I agree. This is mostly or all about China. Thank You very much Richard Nixon - you big state buffoon.
I agree with you completely. In fact it was Britain the was a mercantile state, using tariffs as an economic sword against Europe and its own colonies. Yes, America experimented with tariffs here and there. I think however that what we have with China is very uneven, and is a trade agreement that gives China 90% of what they need, and 10% for America. What many don’t know that during the free market heyday in the US, the US actually had HIGHER wages than Europe. And all the rail roads that were supported by government largesse failed, and the private rail roads succeeded.
Why would a country penalize work (remember, welfare and gifts are free of income tax) and pay those put out of work to buy cheaper goods from China? To make them in China, US companies have to give 50%+ ownership to China and pay import taxes on goods brought to China to build for the US.
What a lie. The USA was completly funded by tariffs and excise taxes until 1913.
That is a far worse penalty than on foreign goods.
Free trade exists no where in the world.
You would rather incentivize putting people on welfare to have them buy foreign goods than gainful employment buying US goods? That is idiotic!
So stop harping on why trade shouldn’t be taxed. It’s plain stupid and against what kept our country going for well over a century.
Bring down taxes and raise the tariffs.
Tariffs increase domestic spending on manufacturing infrastructure and machinery. Manufacturing crates wealth. Importing drains wealth. Tariffs stimulates the economy and raises wages. Tariff are the key to prosperity.
Competition does create better and cheaper products. Domestic competition is a good thing and this system worked perfectly until you Free Traitors™ screwed everything up.
Let it be with a voluntary tax on optional purchases instead of a required tax only on the earning of income.
You lament taxes being high in the US, yet, you love the income tax over tariffs, because the US Government couldn’t be supported by tariffs, alone.
So you are really for high taxes because we couldn’t have what you want on the smaller tax income from tariffs.
That is idiotic.
Jim is a religious disciple of Smithian economics and facts will not deter him from his wrong headed beliefs. He dos not have the ability to learn new things. I think he is a curmudgeon.
Tariffs do not stimulate an economy, but they do take the reigns off of people who choose to be productive.
” I figure **** it, while I’m at it, why not just shoot my buddy, take his job, give it to a sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the national guard...”
An excise-only tax would keep the US government the small, limited, government it was meant to always be. It would also encourage keeping all trade open beyond that, because trade would be required for government to even exist.
I think you are dead wrong about that. Closing factories has killed the local economy and crushed real estate values of many small towns all over the USA. The converse is also true, opening new modern factories stimulates the economy like gangbusters. Tariffs help make that happen just like the lack of a tariff makes offshoring possible. there is so much empirical data that says trade tariffs are a boon. Look a ROK and China. Two countries that hide behind tariffs and have built huge industrial infrastructures and roaring economies..
(. ) the globalist right in the (. )
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