The Tribune ran an editorial (March 4) titled Trump’s
Terrible Tariffs.
I believe the issue of taxing imports is one of the most important
issues for our country today, and I believe that all products entering the
United States should be taxed, preferably at the same rate but exceptions may
be made in unusual circumstances.
There are at least 4 reasons why I believe taxing imports is
important.
1) The bigger
issue is bringing jobs back to our country and not whether you can save some
money on something you buy. When Toyota
first hit the American market, their prices were higher than that for American cars
and without negotiated prices, but Americans were happy to pay the higher
prices, because they believed they were getting a better product.
The fact is, though, that anything can be made cheaper somewhere
in the world. And probably more often
than not, it is an American company choosing to make its products somewhere else
and then shipping them back here.
The product is cheaper, but we lose jobs here. We lose the taxes paid by those employees,
and we then pay the unemployed workers while they are not working. All this puts more pressure on all the governments,
local and federal, to raise taxes or just borrow the money and hope the public
doesn’t pay attention to how much money is then paid for interest on that
debt.
Keeping the jobs in America is more important than saving a
few dollars on a refrigerator. Your taxes
will be lower, government debt will be lower, and inflation will be lower.
We didn’t even have an income tax until 1913. Taxes on imports paid for almost our entire federal
budget.
2) Consumer
prices may rise a bit at first, but they will go down as more companies start
making products here. Taxing imports is
often called protectionism, a label that is supposed to immediately warn us
that the practice is bad. In this case,
it is bad, we are told, because American
manufacturers will feel free to gouge the American consumer with their
prices. The editorial specifically named
foreign competition as a great incentive for American producers to become more
efficient and thus more productive leading to cheaper retail prices.
So whatever happened to domestic competition? The editorial sounded like American producers
collude to keep their prices high and that it is only the threat of a cheaper
foreign product that pushes them to try harder and consequently make a cheaper
product.
Not so. When you have
a dozen American refrigerator manufacturers competing for your business, you
will get the best prices they can offer.
When I was growing up, you could always buy foreign
products. And they almost always cost more.
But they were genuine foreign products, like Swiss chocolate and French
wine, and not American products made somewhere else and then sent back here.
3) Taxing
imports allows us to decide if we want to pay more taxes. A tax on imports is money that goes directly
to our government. It raises the cost of
the consumer item, but you don’t have to pay the tax if you buy American. So people who buy American will pay less
taxes than those who don’t.
Right now the system is skewed a bit, because we have
allowed foreign made products to take over our economy. It’s hard to find anything made in America
anymore. And if you do, it costs more
than a comparable foreign made product. We
have more government safety and other regulations than other countries, and we
pay our employees more and with more employee benefits.
Bring the jobs back. As
more people start working, government costs will go down, and taxes will go down.
You can’t judge our economy by the
unemployment rate when we don’t count the people who have stopped looking for
work, and that’s almost 40%..
4) Trying to
rely on exports for our prosperity is not a wise plan. Exporting products should always be considered
a bonus and not the crux of an economy.
Exports rely on the prosperity of another country for them to be able to
buy our goods, and so, in other words, we are hoping for other countries to prosper
first in order for us to prosper. They
go into recession, then we go into recession.
Why would anyone want to do that?
When imports are really American products being made somewhere
else and then shipped back here, the company essentially forces all the other
American companies making the same product to go overseas as well. And the cost to the American economy is
immeasurable.
When a foreign product is heavily subsidized by its
government to make it cheaper, then we send all our money overseas, and why
would we want to do that either?
Bottom line: everything coming into our country should be
taxed and preferably, I would say, at the same rate. We are not punishing other nations. We are taking care of our own people first,
just like we would expect any other country to do.
