Tariffs can be beneficial
To the editor:
Every society needs a job for every willing and able member. People need a job to support themselves, and for a sense of worth. They don’t need more stuff or cheaper stuff or more than their neighbor. They need the basic
necessities.
They also need a form of government to take care of their security, infrastructure, and other common needs, and this government must be supported (paid for) by its members through some form of taxation. Whatever goods and services are produced domestically provide an opportunity to collect many necessary revenue streams (taxes).
Wages from production of the various goods and services can be taxed to support general government functions. They can also be taxed to fund other specific needs such as: unemployment, worker’s compensation, Social Security, and Medicare. Domestically produced goods and services also provide revenue (taxes) from property taxes on factories, warehouses, office buildings, machinery, and equipment.
These revenue streams (taxes) are not a luxury, but absolute requirements for a functional, just society.
Imports, on the other hand, provide none of these contributions to the importing society. These contributions are all retained by the producing society, thereby deflating their true costs. Imports do not create jobs through design, distribution, and marketing. These jobs are required whether the product is imported or produced domestically.
Tariffs should not be seen as a means of bullying or sanctioning, but rather as a tool to equalize the true cost of a product or service. Free trade is not free. It imposes additional costs on both the imports and exports in the way of job insecurity, joblessness, lower wages, stressed out families, and poverty.
The only thing free trade does is to enable importers and marketers to extract as much wealth as possible while providing nothing in return to support society. It also does away with the necessity of dealing with people through employment, labor relations, management, and bookkeeping, etc.
Tariff critics and free market supporters are not being honest in that they are considering only one side of the equation. Their supposed benefits are to free people up to have more time for other activities or get more skilled employment. All the time being fully aware that time for other activities is meaningless without a means of support, and that additional higher skilled jobs are either non-existent or not practical.
Consumer spending cannot be an accurate measure of an economy’s health as a luxury spending by the well off makes up for the lack of spending by those who cannot even afford basic necessities. Tariffs simply have to provide certain benefits.