Taxing Authority

Sure are a lot of democrats ensnared in that democrat hoax.

It's hard to overestimate what Scott Pressler has done to swing PA.

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The answer to your question is no. You can't avoid them.

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Even deeper than that. If tariffs make overseas manufactured prices higher, there's no reason for domestic producers to not raise their prices to match. So even if you don't buy inputs, if tariffs "work", you'll still pay it buying domestic products.

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In 1960, the top 1% paid about 13% of all federal income taxes; today, they pay roughly 40-45%.

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Yup!

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Know what the top income tax bracket was when "America was great" through the 1950s? 91%

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Tired saw. No one paid that rate. I'd happily swap todays top 39% marginal rate for the 91% rate with the same deductions, shelters, and income required to reach the top bracket. I'd pay less than I do now.

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Massie holding hands with a near-Marxist during the SOTU is pretty amazing.

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Not as amazing as Trump actually enacting marxist policies :lol:.

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If more leaves than enters, the US economy is in possession of less money. Accordingly, our trade counterparts have more money.

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This only half of the equation, though. Yes, they have more dollars, but we have the products we’ve purchased.

You cannot neglect that value and it’s step
in basis. Think of it like this-a chinese company can make a t-shirt, sell to a US importer. Can the chinese firm buy that tshirt back and break even? Nope. That difference is the discount the importer purchased the product for.

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There are several other possibilities. E.g., in any country there is always going to be a segment of society ill-suited for white-collar jobs. Elimination of blue-collar opportunities seeds dependence and desperation within that cohort. Meanwhile, as we've shifted away from blue-collar opportunities, AI has potential to substantially reduce need for white collar jobs. Blue collar positions may become more desirable, albeit with a dearth of opportunity in a country which has shed them over the years.

There is also a matter of evenly resetting the board after 8 decades of uneven trade practices. Those were necessary assists in rebuilding post-WWII economies. But at some point they should have disappeared. Yet, they didn't. It's the classic example of a favor on the giver's part turning into expectation by recipient. Ironically, it's often the case that the more one gives, and the longer the period of charity, the less the favor is appreciated.

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This is a good point. And it raises the question… why aren’t US workers l, lacking opportunity, not emigrating to the places those opportunities have shifted to? It’s also odd that we’re importing tons of blue-collar labor.

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It's particularly painful because our primary raw material cannot be sourced domestically, so we have little choice in the matter. It's not like we can simply choose to "buy American."

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Often the case.

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All that said, I'm still not opposed to tariffs. There's a much bigger picture here that extends beyond our business. It's about more than just us.

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I’m not against them either, as long as they accomplish something. Unfortunately, all they seem to be doing, is collecting money for the government at the expense of business and consumers. :dunno:

There’s absolutely a time-and-place for tariffs. The US just doesn’t have any of them.

The Federal Reseve Bank of NY says we are... LINK

The premise...

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Who Bears the Cost of Tariffs?

Tariff incidence is the technical term for how the costs of a tariff are split between foreign exporters and domestic importers. While importers pay the duty, the “economic burden” of the tariff can be shifted onto exporters if they lower their export prices. We illustrate this effect through a simple example: Suppose foreign exporters charge $100 for a good, and the importing country decides to levy a 25 percent tariff on it. If the foreign price remains unchanged at $100, the duty paid is $25, increasing the import price to $125. In this case, the tariff incidence falls entirely on the importer; in other words, there is 100 percent pass-through from tariffs to import prices, and therefore on U.S. consumers and firms.

In contrast, the exporter might lower its price in order to avoid losing market share. If foreign exporters respond to the tariff by lowering their price to $80 (i.e., $100 divided by 1.25), the price paid by importers will remain $100 (with $20 in duties paid to the government). In this case, 100 percent of the tariff incidence falls on foreign exporters, who now receive $20 less for the same good; in other words, there is zero pass-through from the tariff since the import price is unchanged.

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The result....

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We highlight two main results. First, 94 percent of the tariff incidence was borne by the U.S. in the first eight months of 2025. This result means that a 10 percent tariff caused only a 0.6 percentage point decline in foreign export prices.

Second, the tariff pass-through into import prices has declined in the latter part of the year. That is, a larger share of the tariff incidence was borne by foreign exporters by the end of the year. In November, a 10 percent tariff was associated with a 1.4 percent decline in foreign export prices, suggesting an 86 percent pass-through to U.S. import prices. Given that the average tariff in December was 13 percent (see the first chart), our results imply that U.S. import prices for goods subject to the average tariff increased by 11 percent (13 times 0.86) more than those for goods not subject to tariffs. These higher import prices caused firms to reorganize supply chains, as suggested by the findings presented in the two charts above.

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Another study came to similar conclusions: LINK

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Table 1 reports our baseline estimates across all trading partners. The coefficient on log tariffs in the unit value regression (column 3) is -0.039, statistically significant at the 10% level. This implies that foreign exporters absorb less than 4% of the tariff burden; the remaining 96% passes through to US importers.

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• The 2025 US tariffs are an own goal: American importers and consumers bear nearly the entire cost. Foreign exporters absorb only about 4% of the tariff burden—the remaining 96% is passed through to US buyers.

• Using shipment-level data covering over 25 million transactions valued at nearly $4 trillion, we find near-complete pass-through of tariffs to US import prices.

• US customs revenue surged by approximately $200 billion in 2025—a tax paid almost entirely by Americans.

• Event studies around discrete tariff shocks on Brazil (50%) and India (25–50%) confirm: export prices did not decline. Trade volumes collapsed instead.

• Indian export customs data validates our findings: when facing US tariffs, Indian exporters maintained their prices and reduced shipments. They did not “eat” the tariff.

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There's a CBO study out there that comes to about the same conclusion, but I can't find it.


So a couple of notes: Tariffs tend do to one of several things, depending on pricing power. If you hold pricing power, tariffs are awesome! We clearly do not -- beacuse we do not have spare capacity.

NC_Tigah has been correct in his assertion that tariffs would cut demand for imports :cheers: However, this seems to only apply for nations with the highest tariffs, and imports have shifted to other countries to fill the gaps. (the second study goes into detail nicely with this).




Ultimately, if tariffs are going to "work" for re-shoring manufacturing, they will need to be much higher (like 200-300%), across-the-board, and collect a lot more money from US businesses and consumers in the interim. Otherwise they are just a tool for generating jingoistic headlines at the expense of US citizens.

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using the Zim as an example?

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:lol:I mean, is it a currency with littel demand? Clearly. They have a pretty small trade deficit, too.

Think of it this way... what currency woulde you prefer to be paid in than USD? I cannot think of a single one. But I'm open to ideas :cheers: