Do you think congress may have forgotten how their job works? Like I remember learning the importance of congress in middle school. Power of purse and all that. Why is the congress petitioning the president for legislation? Can we please replace the congressmen who don’t understand what their job description is? Every day in the news its just “Legislator asking someone else to do their job” “Legislature confused on how laws are made” “legislator claiming the presidents office is just better at making laws”
Well heres a far left economist who says they are basically a VAT tax. However he outlines that exporters do absorb some of the cost, but its mainly been US business absorbing the tariffs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJYqvK_oVN8
If you’re a left leaning person isnt that good, cant the government now distribute that money and cut less programs, as corporations absorb much of the cost? Obviously the Trump tax cuts are where much of it will be going, but if a left leaning politician did it and removed those tax cuts wouldnt it be a net positive?
TLDR tariffs have always existed to protect people like Elon Musk from having to compete with the hard working people of china. They are not beneficial to the working class unless you’re only focused on your countries working class, and not the global working class. Since it is a consumption tax the burden is unevenly spread upon the poor and working class who are living on fixed budgets that don’t have room for price changes. It’s easily paid by the rich and disproportionately hurts the poor.
VAT tax is basically a consumption tax with more steps. At the end of the day the cost gets transferred to the consumer who pays more for what they consume. I generally don’t have a problem with a consumption tax, but with all the other taxes targeting the poor and relieving the rich, the tariffs are a step too far. They are not making that much money from the tariffs. common economic theory is when you tax spending, it slows spending and thus generates less revenues. if businesses go to cut costs to absorb production, that usually hits labor and thus consumers.
Now let’s just say we did tariffs in a bubble which we used to do, yes tariffs are a valid way to balance competition and generate revenue. Consumption taxes are good because we probably should consume less. In this case they are being used to hoist up industrialists, and the revenues are not significant enough to deal with the current deficit.
So from a leftist perspective and the Neo-liberal perspective, absolutely not there’s way better ways to raise money that hurst the poor less. Taxing land, or capital gains, or inheritance, or any of the numbers of ways large amounts of money changes hands, is a stronger leftist position. You would have to use tariffs precisely to help the working class. The nature of a tariff is to restrict international trade, so you’d also have to forsake your brother over seas who’s also in the middle class. You’re putting national interests in front of human interests which is not a very commie thing to do.