Aug

21

So the traditional way of trade wars is to levy high tariffs on goods imported from the opponent country. The logic is that the higher tariffs result in higher prices in the market for those imports, so the compatriots will buy less of those, resulting in less exports by the opponent country, and hence damaging the economy of the opponent country. A critical condition for the traditional way of fighting is that there is sufficient competition in the market for the targeted imports. Otherwise, the compatriot consumers will end up paying more and get hurt. In many cases, this latter case is true. This is why many say there is no winner in a trader way.

So can't a trade war be fought better with a better strategy? Instead of imposing tariffs alone on the imports, the policy is to force reduction of import prices on goods from the opponent country, and then levy the tariffs. The percentage of reduction can be deviced according to market conditions in the imposing country and in the opponent country. Should we term this as "managed pro-dumping"? With the price reductions and tariffs, the prices of the imported goods will likely stay relatively the same as before in the market. This way, the compatriot competing indutries don't get hurt much, the compatriot consumers don't get hurt as much, but the opponent country bleeds if they continue to export.

Stefan Jovanovich writes: 

There tariff question was one of the 3 issues that Americans disagreed about enough to make them a constant political argument. The others were (1) the expansion of slavery to new states and the Federal territories and (2) the currency question which was about everything from internal improvements to national banking. Neither side argued that there should be no tariffs, just as neither side argued that all slavery should be instantly be abolished. The question was whether tariffs could be protectionist or had to be for revenue only. In the current debate the revenue question has been largely ignored. I doubt that it will be much longer. For 2016 total U.S. imports were roughly $2.25 trillion. The average rate for the Walker tariff - written and passed by the revenue only side of the debate -was 25%. Applied to total imports a modern Walker tariff would produce $550 billion - 55% of all the employment taxes collected last year. I doubt very much that I am the only person who has made this back of the envelope calculation, and the geezers among us remember the last time a non-establishment Republican President considered tax changes based on numbers that could be scribbled on a napkin. What no American in the 19th century disagreed about was that foreigners should pay the taxes and leave Americans to worry about the costs.

anonymous writes: 

All taxes are (pick one or more) fascist, communist, democratic socialist, Gaullist, Whig…..They are, as the Libertarians justly remind us, enforced at the point of a gun. The question that must always be asked is which official theft is least threatening to citizens' individual liberty. Direct taxes are everywhere and always the worst because they are imposed on people directly (hence the name) and not simply on their transactions and property. That is why the Constitution did not allow them until the party of slavery, segregation and socialism and the theocrats (aka Prohibitionists) made their evil bargain. Tariffs work, for the same reason sales taxes do; the rates can, in a political economy not wholly corrupted by wage bribery, be set low enough that cheating is not worth the bother - as Amazon's recent conduct illustrates. (Collecting sales taxes has not affected their volume of trade, contrary to what do many analysts once feared.) The fundamental point to be understood is this: income taxes and employment taxes, in particular, demand the greatest oppression because individual extortion is built into the process of collection. People will cheat much more on direct taxes because they reward cheating. The rate differential is enormous (25% is the minimum) and the taxpayer has the "freedom" (sic) to characterize his/her/its transactions. (Contrast the enduring simplicities of the Uniform Commercial Code with the exponential mushrooming of every income tax law.). Like the drug laws and other forms of outright prohibition, direct taxes are guaranteed to be an abomination. No wonder Marx loved them.


Comments

Name

Email

Website

Speak your mind

Archives

Resources & Links

Search