Donald Trump was interviewed recently on Bloomberg News and talked about his plans to place tariffs on imports from China and other countries to level the playing field to and make the United States more competitive with other countries. The interviewer used the “experts” card to point out that Trump was in error and the “experts” had decreed that tariffs are a bad thing causing consumers to pay more for goods and services. When I heard this I immediately thought about the “experts” in the Center for Disease Control who lied to the public. Those people lied to our citizens, suppressed information that did not agree with their agenda and pressured individuals who disagreed with them to be silent and even tried to destroy professionally those who would not bend to their will. If these experts are like the “experts” in the Center for Disease Control we should not listen to anything they say. These “experts” were not a blessing to the People of the United States but a curse.
I was also reminded of a course in International Trade I took in college many years ago. The gist of the huge and expensive book the course required and the Professor’ wisdom was tariffs were a bad thing. The theory went like this. Some countries have advantages such as abundant sunshine, tropical weather and abundant rainfall and can grow bananas cheaper than anywhere else. If no tariffs are placed on bananas all other nations who import bananas would benefit from the lowest possible price. If another country had abundant iron ore to mine they could build factories nearby and produce steel cheaper than other countries. Without tariffs on these steel products everyone in the world who needed steel could get it at the cheapest possibly price.
Sounds like a great plan does it not? What the course did not mention is what happens when politics enter into the Equation. Many businesses and organizations spend together millions of dollars on lobbyists who call on politicians to give them special breaks to keep competitors from underpricing them. One of the ways to do this is to get the politicians to put tariffs on competitors from foreign countries. The lobbyists also points out to the politicians that those they lobby for have contributed to the politician’s campaign fund. That is all the politician needs to hear before proposing higher tariffs on the foreign competitors. The business owner’s profits go up and the Unionized Workers who also have lobbyists calling upon the same politicians with offers of politician contributions benefits greatly with higher wages. In this scenario there are three beneficiaries to tariffs, businessmen, the labor union workers and the politicians. The rest of us just pay higher prices on the goods that higher tariffs are placed on. When this happens, tariffs are a bad thing causing the citizens to pay higher prices. Remember when the Chinese were funneling millions into companies connected to the Biden Crime Family for no apparent services in return? Joe was fond of saying we need a rising China, so he was looking out for their interests instead of the interests of our people. No, we did not need a rising China, but Biden needed a rising China to funnel money in his direction. And did not Joe become a multi-millionaire in government service?
When are tariffs a good thing? For starters China makes it no secret they want to destroy our freedoms. They are involved in espionage in stealing our patents. Their agents are hacking into our computer systems stealing information and causing huge losses from the damage they are able to inflict. China supports our enemies like Iran and North Korea and threatens our allies. They financially support businesses in competition with ours giving those competitors unfair advantage over our businesses. They use our money from the goods they sell us to build up their military to threaten smaller nations. Those who think cheaper goods are more important than our survival are fools. When would tariffs be a good thing? Well right now. If we raise tariffs on all Chinese goods, we might cut off most of the money China is depending on to bully the world. Why even do higher tariffs? Just refuse to trade with a country whose stated goal is to destroy us.
This is an opinion blog for Conservatives and People of Faith.