Globalization made a world-wide labor market. We’re so affluent, the US couldn’t possibly compete and lost a lot of jobs.

Capitalism worked its magic, gave us a cornucopia of inexpensive manufactured goods, and made the captains of industry obscenely rich.

Unfortunately, our government had stopped protecting the working class from the rich and powerful. Now half the people have a tiny fraction of the nation’s wealth.  The American Dream is all but dead.

Trump is promising to bring  back jobs by making foreign labor artificially expensive with tariffs and his trade war.  That’s dubious, inflationary, disruptive, and dangerous   Trade wars can turn into shooting wars.

When a consumer buys a product that has a tariff on it, han pays the foreign producer’s cost, hanen profit, the tariff, and the importer’s profit: a fixed price for the product.

Everybody is a consumer. Everybody pays. That’s Fair, isn’t it? No! Tariffs are a consumption tax paid mainly by the middle class and the poor, not the rich.

That is grossly unfair.

Consumption can’t be adjusted much to meet the government’s revenue needs. In fact, increasing tariffs is counterproductive. It raises prices and cuts consumption

Tariffs are really not a good way to fund the economy.

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