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The Largest US Trading Partners All Put Higher Tariffs on the US Than Vice Versa

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Re: The Largest US Trading Partners All Put Higher Tariffs on the US Than Vice Versa

#61

Post by gremlinsinc »

zip1234 wrote: post #30
wpietri wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In which case, I'd much rather we increased taxes on income and/or wealth to a) help workers move up the value chain, and b) provide a safety net for people who lose out on trade. A tariff on "cheap shit from Amazon" is a heavily regressive tax, and acts to reduce total delivered value. Whereas taxing the well-off to pay for education and encourage investment increases total delivered value.

How does taxing the well-off to pay for education encourage investment?

More education = higher jobs for more people = more people have money = more people spend money at walmart/amazon/malls/movies/local restaurants/etc... Some of these people will use their money to start businesses.

Some of these people may have ended up in a poverty trap all their lives, and never contributed. One may even go on to end cancer, or do something amazing with the extra opportunity they now have.

Education ALWAYS contributes to society as a whole, not just that individual. America needs to start valuing education more, I see dumbasses on social media and elsewhere who don't fact check anything, believe everything they're told and can't even tell which side of the civil war Lincoln was fighting on.

They are the same people Jay Leno used to make fun of by asking simple questions on his Jay Walking bit.

Re: The Largest US Trading Partners All Put Higher Tariffs on the US Than Vice Versa

#62

Post by gremlinsinc »

HillaryBriss wrote: post #36
wpietri wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In which case, I'd much rather we increased taxes on income and/or wealth to a) help workers move up the value chain, and b) provide a safety net for people who lose out on trade. A tariff on "cheap shit from Amazon" is a heavily regressive tax, and acts to reduce total delivered value. Whereas taxing the well-off to pay for education and encourage investment increases total delivered value.

I agree with the increasing taxes on the wealth, but as a long time resident of California I've become skeptical of the government's skill and ability to provide a safety net. In some governments somewhere in the world, these programs are effective. But there's no guarantee they will be well run and well administered. If a government justifies taxing more heavily to fulfill those functions, it's critically important…

It'd be a bit easier if we cut the pentagon budget by 60% to match other countries of similar size.

UHC would actually save 2 trillion over 10 years (according to a very conservative Koch brothers study).

We need to end money in politics though, there needs to not be easy ways to bribe politicians.... It's becoming a circus, until corruption is tackled, nothing will function efficiently ever.

Re: The Largest US Trading Partners All Put Higher Tariffs on the US Than Vice Versa

#63

Post by commandlinefan »

EvilEndures wrote: post #41
commandlinefan wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> traditionally have frowned upon receiving welfare You weaken your (otherwise solid) argument when you do that. Tariffs and welfare are two different things, and you know that, and everybody reading this knows that, but you try to sneak in a conflation anyway. They're both bad, but they're bad for different reasons: accepting that taxation is a necessary evil (I'm not sure I do, but set that aside), welfare involves…

> They're both bad, but they're bad for different reasons: accepting that taxation is a necessary evil (I'm not sure I do, but set that aside), welfare involves paying out of tax revenues into individuals pockets. Tariffs are exactly the opposite - tariffs involve increasing tax revenue by collecting taxes on imports, and then using that tax revenue for whatever you use all the other tax revenue for. If Mr. Widget is…

Well, you can argue (as you seem to be, although I'm not entirely convinced) that tariffs and welfare lead to the same result, but to imply that opposing welfare means you must also oppose tariffs is a non-sequitur.

Re: The Largest US Trading Partners All Put Higher Tariffs on the US Than Vice Versa

#64

Post by commandlinefan »

brentjanderson wrote: post #46
commandlinefan wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> traditionally have frowned upon receiving welfare You weaken your (otherwise solid) argument when you do that. Tariffs and welfare are two different things, and you know that, and everybody reading this knows that, but you try to sneak in a conflation anyway. They're both bad, but they're bad for different reasons: accepting that taxation is a necessary evil (I'm not sure I do, but set that aside), welfare involves…

"Welfare" in this sense could mean imposing artificial limits on competition. The domestic industry receiving the shelter of the tariff benefits from increased supply. Although not a direct handout of cash, the industry benefits all the same. The benefits from a tariff for a domestic industry should be short lived. In the long run, tariffs hurt everyone. The administration has also set aside $12 billion to relieve fa…

Then you're diluting the term, which is also unfortunate. Corporate welfare is a useful term to refer to subsidies (again, completely different than tariffs), which actually _are_ income redistribution and should be opposed on the same basis.

Re: The Largest US Trading Partners All Put Higher Tariffs on the US Than Vice Versa

#65

Post by commandlinefan »

s73v3r_ wrote: post #47
commandlinefan wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> traditionally have frowned upon receiving welfare You weaken your (otherwise solid) argument when you do that. Tariffs and welfare are two different things, and you know that, and everybody reading this knows that, but you try to sneak in a conflation anyway. They're both bad, but they're bad for different reasons: accepting that taxation is a necessary evil (I'm not sure I do, but set that aside), welfare involves…

I strongly disagree. Tariffs and welfare are both ways that the same thing manifests itself. They're both government handouts; just one is to those who are destitute, and one is to the wealthy.

Are you sure you're not mixing up tariffs and subsidies? Subsidies _are_ welfare - the government collects tax revenue and gives it to corporations. Tariffs are taxes imposed on imported goods. EvilEndures's argument (seems to be) that when you impose taxes on imported goods, exporters stop or reduce exportation (which is true, that's the point of tariffs after all) so that buyers are forced to buy through domestic manufacturers. The chain of causation there is pretty fragile, but that's _still_ not comparable to welfare where your money is forcibly redistributed - you were going to buy _x_ anyway, but you end up buying it for possibly a bit more money from a domestic supplier rather than a foreign one. It's not a good idea and it doesn't work to stimulate the economy the way its supporters want it to, but it's still pretty far from "welfare" in any common definition of the term, corporate or otherwise.

Re: The Largest US Trading Partners All Put Higher Tariffs on the US Than Vice Versa

#66

Post by resters »

tynpeddler wrote: post #56
resters wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a foreign government subsidizes manufacturing of things that are exported to the US, it is taxing its own citizens and effectively paying US firms/individuals to import those goods at a discount.

If it were that simple than no one would care if Walmart dumps a ton of goods on the market at below cost to drive its competitors out of business.

Companies always try to undercut competitors. That is just how it works when you have competitive markets. If China subsidizes steel production, the subsidy is benefitting US firms that import steel.

If there is a need for the US to have steel production capacity domestically, then why not keep steel reserves in a warehouse somewhere. This would cost a fraction of the cost of tariffs. The same rationale is used with oil reserves.

Keeping reserves costs a bit of money and requires a small number of people to administer the project. Contrast this with a tariff that props up a dead industry and results in thousands of workers being paid to work a job that shouldn't really exist and is essentially a welfare check in disguise.

Far better to use the money to directly and transparently address any resource needs, national security, etc,. and then also use money to directly and transparently provide job training to help workers deal with slower-paced but obvious economic trends.

Re: The Largest US Trading Partners All Put Higher Tariffs on the US Than Vice Versa

#67

Post by resters »

commandlinefan wrote: post #64
brentjanderson wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Welfare" in this sense could mean imposing artificial limits on competition. The domestic industry receiving the shelter of the tariff benefits from increased supply. Although not a direct handout of cash, the industry benefits all the same. The benefits from a tariff for a domestic industry should be short lived. In the long run, tariffs hurt everyone. The administration has also set aside $12 billion to relieve fa…

Then you're diluting the term, which is also unfortunate. Corporate welfare is a useful term to refer to subsidies (again, completely different than tariffs), which actually _are_ income redistribution and should be opposed on the same basis.

Not sure why you find it necessary to draw such a firm distinction between subsidies, tariffs and the many other ways that firms can obtain advantages via crony capitalist schemes created in cahoots with sympathetic (if not corrupt) regulators.

Firms are going to be clever and will find ways to have laws passed that give them advantages over other firms.

This is one reason Zuck said he thinks Facebook should be regulated. As the biggest player in the space, Facebook can afford to hire the lawyers and additional staff necessary to comply with such regulation. Smaller firms on the other hand will be less able to afford this and so the regulation serves as a barrier to competition that insulates Facebook from competition.

Government crony deals come in all different shapes and sizes. In the early 2000s the government gave a big handout to oil companies by changing the accounting rules, allowing the firms to sell lots of oil at a massive profit without having to claim the profit, since they could suddenly consider the "cost" of the oil based on LIFO rather than FIFO. This small change gifted the industry with billions of dollars that would otherwise have been paid in corporate tax.

You might think that all these crony deals are a good thing and are just capitalism in action. Quite the contrary. Firms should be innovating better products and services, not figuring out ways to come up with sweet deals with regulators that give them advantages and steal from society or unfairly harm smaller, non-incumbent firms.

And to be sure, whenever those policies can be framed as being essential to national security, they will be, as this helps make the crony capitalism harder for the average person to spot and lets the jingoistic ideal of "helping our firms vs foreign firms" be the focal point.

Re: The Largest US Trading Partners All Put Higher Tariffs on the US Than Vice Versa

#68

Post by s73v3r_ »

commandlinefan wrote: post #65
s73v3r_ wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly disagree. Tariffs and welfare are both ways that the same thing manifests itself. They're both government handouts; just one is to those who are destitute, and one is to the wealthy.

Are you sure you're not mixing up tariffs and subsidies? Subsidies _are_ welfare - the government collects tax revenue and gives it to corporations. Tariffs are taxes imposed on imported goods. EvilEndures's argument (seems to be) that when you impose taxes on imported goods, exporters stop or reduce exportation (which is true, that's the point of tariffs after all) so that buyers are forced to buy through domestic m…

Tariffs are a subsidy.

Re: The Largest US Trading Partners All Put Higher Tariffs on the US Than Vice Versa

#69

Post by simonsarris »

resters wrote: post #33

For the benefit of HN readers, no serious economist supports tariffs in any form. Tariffs appeal to the naive idea that trade imbalances between two nations are a bad thing. They simply are not a bad thing. But due to the political history of tariffs it becomes possible for politicians to claim (falsely) that tariffs will benefit the economy, when in fact they are (at best) a handout to specific industries. What real…

> The understanding that tariffs are foolish is a universal among economists and is not remotely a partisan issue.

The obvious endgame is not for the US to keep these tax increases. The administration stated the goals fairly clearly, and almost(?) none of them are controversial:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/president-do...

Tariffs are leverage. Economists not liking them is a lot like an economist pointing out that manufacturing bullets has a fair bit of dis-utility. It's true at face value but you might want to use them for something like if there's, you know, a war going on. If a war is ongoing and an economist wants to talk about how bullets have a lot of dis-utility when we could be manufacturing more spoons, that's fine I guess. But it misses the whole point.

Anti-tax Republicans including the current admin obviously don't want tariffs around either. But they do want to use them for a short while as a tool to get China to stop the practices outlines above. No one in the republican administration intends to impose the tariffs for the sake of collecting tax revenue or anything like that.

Re: The Largest US Trading Partners All Put Higher Tariffs on the US Than Vice Versa

#70

Post by dang »

> I don't know if you're being intellectually dishonest on purpose

That crosses into personal attack. Please edit such bits out of your comments here, and follow the rest of the guidelines as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Edit: We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17718957 and marked it off-topic.

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