It's difficult to find serious, non-partisan information about the topic. Best I can figure out there are these problems to solve:
- Tariffs imbalances. For example the EU has 10% tariff on cars and the US has a 2.5% tariff. Seems like we should offer for those to be zero. All tariffs should be eliminated. Not sure about all the other tariff imbalances, but there certainly are some that need to be fixed.
- Tax differences. The USA has chosen to tax income more than consumption, where other countries are more heavily taxed on consumption. For example... The USA has no VAT and an average sales tax of 8.5%. Mexico has a 16% VAT. When Mexican-made product is sold in the US, US consumers pay 7.5% less tax than when US products are sold in Mexico. We aren't going have any more success changing other countries tax code than they are of changing ours, but it seems fair to consider offsetting a portion of the difference with a reciprocal tax, considering that they disincent their own domestic consumption (and therefore how much they consume from US sources) via a heavier consumption-based tax code than the US.
- Intellectual property theft. China steels the shit out of our IP. Huawai is a global powerhouse due to this phenomenon. Hundreds of billions of dollars per year is stolen from the US by China and others. Seems like this should be immediately fixed.
- Regulations. I know for a fact that US companies have trouble doing business in China due to protectionist rules. Uber and Amazon have not done well in China, and I suspect this is most of the reason why. Need to fix.
- Respect for your customer in international affairs. For global security issues... dealing with North Korea, Iran, Russia, etc... the USA should demand certain cooperation from countries that we choose to manufacture our products as table stakes to be a economic partner to the US.
Now I'm not so sure that the "steel and aluminum" tariffs are the best way to start to solve this problem, but I'm pretty sure that it's difficult to argue that the 5 points above aren't all real problems that require improvements. I'm not hearing from the media alternate solutions... all I hear is "tariffs bad". I agree tariffs are bad, but I'm rarely convinced a proposed solution strategy is bad without an alternate solution strategy being proposed.
- Tariffs imbalances. For example the EU has 10% tariff on cars and the US has a 2.5% tariff. Seems like we should offer for those to be zero. All tariffs should be eliminated. Not sure about all the other tariff imbalances, but there certainly are some that need to be fixed.
- Tax differences. The USA has chosen to tax income more than consumption, where other countries are more heavily taxed on consumption. For example... The USA has no VAT and an average sales tax of 8.5%. Mexico has a 16% VAT. When Mexican-made product is sold in the US, US consumers pay 7.5% less tax than when US products are sold in Mexico. We aren't going have any more success changing other countries tax code than they are of changing ours, but it seems fair to consider offsetting a portion of the difference with a reciprocal tax, considering that they disincent their own domestic consumption (and therefore how much they consume from US sources) via a heavier consumption-based tax code than the US.
- Intellectual property theft. China steels the shit out of our IP. Huawai is a global powerhouse due to this phenomenon. Hundreds of billions of dollars per year is stolen from the US by China and others. Seems like this should be immediately fixed.
- Regulations. I know for a fact that US companies have trouble doing business in China due to protectionist rules. Uber and Amazon have not done well in China, and I suspect this is most of the reason why. Need to fix.
- Respect for your customer in international affairs. For global security issues... dealing with North Korea, Iran, Russia, etc... the USA should demand certain cooperation from countries that we choose to manufacture our products as table stakes to be a economic partner to the US.
Now I'm not so sure that the "steel and aluminum" tariffs are the best way to start to solve this problem, but I'm pretty sure that it's difficult to argue that the 5 points above aren't all real problems that require improvements. I'm not hearing from the media alternate solutions... all I hear is "tariffs bad". I agree tariffs are bad, but I'm rarely convinced a proposed solution strategy is bad without an alternate solution strategy being proposed.
