re: Tariffs are simply taxes

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And a large supply of cheap manual labor. Wonder where that would come from? Hmm.... anyone have any ideas?

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Roll back all the programs allowing people to sit home eating Cheetos would be a good start.

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I mean... why *wouldn't* we have a trade deficit? It would be silly not to.

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Irrelevant.

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You're better than this.

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That ~$1T/yr leaves the US, and is subsequently taxed elsewhere.

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This doesn't really matter when you can print money. But thanks for the opportunity to explain why a strong dollar matters.

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The US government gets nothing in the transaction. Why do that?

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They do. Americans that have cheap goods thing times are good and re-elect their leaders.

How happy would american consumers be paying $5,000 for a TV that europeans can get for $200? Would that be good for Americans?

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Roll back all the programs allowing people to sit home eating Cheetos would be a good start.

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Every time I've seen someone pay with food stamps they're a human blimp and it's always junk food they're buying.

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The relevant fact is we do have a trade deficit. That ~$1T/yr leaves the US, and is subsequently taxed elsewhere. The US government gets nothing in the transaction. Why do that?

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I had no clue that the purpose of trade was to fill government coffers. For some strange reason, I thought it was for sound financial reasons.

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Whcih kinda negates the "we're getting a raw deal". Foreign tariffs on US products aren't what's making our manufacturing base uncompetitive.

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You're shifting the argument. I'm happy to discuss market competition separately, but the raw deal were are getting is sending $1T in taxable revenue abroad every year w/o collecting taxes on it ourselves. We are pissing away $100B in annual revenue in a tax scenario where foreign governments would often cover some of those costs

Funny watching a union lackey try to job shame someone else and having to lie in the process.
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You would probably make more money as a tour bus driver that what youre doing now.

To you, Merit is a curse word.

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If I get a 30% raise because of no income tax, I’ll pay more for goods and services.

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Please tell me you aren't banking on this happening. The govt has no intention of putting more money into your pocket

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That's evident. Perhaps in an equally clueless fashion you'll issue a similar observation regarding your own personal income, or that of the company you work for?

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I’m familiar with both because they are one and the same for me. But I am enjoying your clueless observations that trade is some sort of mechanism for government taxation and that trade deficits are somehow bad.

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I had no clue that the purpose of trade was to fill government coffers.

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Mighty progressive of him..

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You're better than this.
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How happy would american consumers be paying $5,000 for a TV that europeans can get for $200?

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Yikes.
Under what circumstance would that happen?

Regarding the trade deficit, you want to discuss why it exists, which again is fine.
But the relevance, in terms of tariff economics, is that it exists at all.
That's why the peripheral stuff is, as I said, irrelevant.

Put differently, if the trade deficit disappears, so does the advantage of US tariffs. As long as it remains so does the advantage of US tariffs. That is the singular relevancy.

If the dollar nosedives, or the US develops some massively exportable product, etc., and the trade deficit vaporizes, so too will any economic rationale for tariffs.