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January 26, 2017
America to Mexico: Pay Up
Sean Spicer Reveals How Mexico Will Pay For "The Wall""When you look at the plan that's taking shape now, using comprehensive tax reform as a means to tax imports from countries that we have a trade deficit from, like Mexico. If you tax that $50 billion at 20 percent of imports — which is by the way a practice that 160 other countries do — right now our country's policy is to tax exports and let imports flow freely in, which is ridiculous. By doing it that we can do $10 billion a year and easily pay for the wall just through that mechanism alone. That's really going to provide the funding."Seems to me that once the folks that import into the US start feeling the burn we can look for them to insist that all Mexico pay. Result: Mo' money, mo' money, mo' money.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at January 26, 2017 12:57 PM. This is an entry on the sideblog of American Digest: Check it out.
Your Say
Ever notice that the gov't's solution to everything is to tax the shit out of the US workers?
If the gov't taxes imports who do you think is going to pay for that?
You will, through higher prices for the imported items, or lack of availability of those items.
Yes, it true, businesses, whether they are US or foreign, are in it to win and when a gov't gives them another hurdle they pass that too onto the purchasers.
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When the ADA decided to recalculate the way they determine the number of handicapped parking spaces in commercial parking lots my landlord was forced to accomodate 2 more HC spaces and he passed the cost on to us the leasees at $500 per year increase. I then raised the square foot price of the buildings I design and at the end of the year had a net increase in my bottom line of over $20k, all paid for by my clients.
Think of it as the magic shell game you never win. The gov't shuffles the words around so you never know exactly what is going on, you only know that at the end of the year you have less money than the year before and you don't know exactly why unless you break out the magnifying glass and scour the databases.
Posted by: ghostsniper at January 26, 2017 1:47 PM
See, if Mexico had nuclear weapons and we owed them a trillion dollars then nobody would be saying one damn thing about taxes or tariffs or any of that shit.
Excuse me, I'm heading down to the basement and start building a nuclear warhead.
Posted by: John the River at January 26, 2017 9:25 PM
Ghost, you are right about business passing through costs to the people, but the other side of this BS is the loss of jobs and wages going out of country. So they have to bring back the jobs and pay more. You pay more and you make more.
There is and was much pain in the crap that the past clowns put through with the old trade laws. There will be pain with the change.
My guess is with our raising our taxes on imports, called Sectoral Reciprocity, those other countries change their tax laws to equalize the trade balance. Those that don't will lose out.
After all, it is about money, nothing more.
Posted by: Vermont Woodchuck at January 28, 2017 5:45 AM
"the other side of this BS is the loss of jobs and wages going out of country"
True, but what does that cost the US?
If consumers save an average of $500.00 per year on cheap clothing made abroad the US benefit is $162.5 billion. How much will the US benefit from repatriating all of those jobs, paying the factory workers large wages and charging consumers the necessarily larger price?
The real problem is that cheap imports are always a net national gain. More clothing for more people. There are those who suffer - displaced clothing workers.
What to do. I dunno. But Trump's modern Smoot-Hawley is surely not the answer.
Posted by: Fred Z at January 28, 2017 12:07 PM