Source: Tariffs Are Awful, but the Income Tax May Be Worse - FEE
At the end of the day, a tariff is a tax. You can argue about who pays it but it is designed to and effectively does make products more expensive to import. This will put an upward pressure on prices which makes the consumer likely to bear the brunt of this increased cost. I am not a fan of new taxes therefore I am not a fan of tariffs.
Having said that, I definitely consider the income tax to be a worse form of taxation. If we could somehow replace the income tax with tariffs (reasonable ones anyway) that would be great. After all, if you agree that there has to be (or will be) at least SOME government then it needs some sort of funding. However, replacing the income tax is not what has happened so far. The U.S. has simply added tariffs to the already existing tax burden which of course includes the income tax. The income tax is unlikely to go away and in order to make it permanently go away, we would need a Constitutional amendment.
This article lists all kinds of reasons why tariffs (and the income tax) are bad. And it certainly may be that Trump is merely using tariffs as a bargaining tool to get better trade deals than what we had before and that most of these tariffs will eventually go away. I'll reserve judgement a little longer until we see how this plays out.
This reminds me...I still need to do my taxes...
We will have to wait and see if it is just a strategy to get countries to the negotiating table or if Trump actually believes that these tariffs can make america great again.
Maybe he is right, but one thing is clear. America has lost its position in the world as a leader and a country everyone looks up to. Now we the rest of the world dont feel like we can ever trust america again.
Most of the trade agreements that the U.S. is part of have generally been more favorable to the other country that to the U.S. I get why Trump is trying to change that. I think the approach is a bit heavy handed. On the other hand, he is approaching this from the background as a businessman and he only has four years left in office to accomplish something. You can be in business with your best friend but you still have to treat the business aspect of it as business. Trust is nice, reciprocity is better.
Yeah from his point of view I think his action makes sense. I am just saying, that business is business, but if there is no trust between two parties there will never be amy business. If I as a consumer dont trust grocery shop A, I will instead go to grocery shop B.
If the tariff is designed to discourage consumers from buying imports and boost the US economy, why is taxing wages not seen as a discouragement from participating in the productive economy here as well?
Well it is certainly a discouragement from the point of view that you have less to participate with. Of course the government is participating for you.
The government actively violating every principle I hold dear? They do not represent me in the slightest. It's just a mafia with a flag.
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