Column: Trumponomics? He would impose the equivalent of a huge tax hike

Income taxes are collected to pay for government spending, but the tariffs are imposed tp force an anti free trade agenda, and 60% tariffs is nothing short of absurd.

Well, its not one or the other, we are keeping income taxes and adding tariffs.

Right. The next president will run on eliminating the "oppressive import taxes", which hurt the hard-working Americans.

 

For now. But in the context of people calling for higher taxes, trade taxes are better. Money is money. Increase income taxes or levy trade taxes, its all gonna pay for the same stuff in the end. I would prefer we decrease govt spending. But short of that, we have to pay for increased spending somehow. At least with trade taxes, those who can afford less and thus buy less are also emburdenned less. And while we continue to rely on imports for 'essential' goods, this can't be demonstrated to be a 'luxury tax', but if we keep it around long enough that production of essential goods moves back home, then it really will be a 'luxury tax', and a voluntary one at that. And that would be nice. Not to mention the benefit of production moving back here insulating us from the 'supply chain' problems associated with things like pandemics, disasters, both natural and man-made.

 

Its not a luxury tax. Raw materials, food, and machine parts will be taxed too and it will affect the price of everything.

 

Its not a luxury tax yet. But we have plenty of raw materials to make everything we need here. The only thing missing is the incentive to do the labor here. Import taxes create that incentive. Enough incentive and time and we would produce everything we need, then import taxes would be luxury taxes.

 

If you say so, but usually when the government control replaces free markets, it usually doesn't end well. To each his own I guess. Our trading partners will impose similar taxes on US goods, which will hurt every company which exports goods elsewhere. Its possible to survive of course. Even USSR survived without international trade, but it wasn't pretty.

And we don't have all the raw materials here, and some which we do have is far more expensive than importing it.

 

That's due mostly to our own self imposed regulations. With a few exceptions like some rare earth minerals, we have everything we need and there's no reason to import it except to take advantage of cheaper labor overseas so we don't have to pay Americans their higher quality of life wages ...which is driving our quality of life down.

If not with import taxes, how would you propose we move more production back to the US so Americans can get paid to produce?

 

I prefer letting the free markets decide rather than the federal government,