Let’s hear no more of how these customs revenues will be used to reduce the U.S. government’s budget deficit.
Editor, Des Moines Register
Editor:
Agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins proposes using revenues from Trump’s tariffs to compensate farmers for the damage inflicted on them by those tariffs (“USDA secretary says farmer bailout could be funded with tariff proceeds,” Sept. 18).
Call it the Trump Tariff Two-step. First, the administration raises tariffs that extract more tax revenues from Americans who purchase imports. Second, the administration then uses some of those same revenues, not to reduce the budget deficit, but instead to protect itself from the political backlash of a politically powerful interest group – farmers – whose members are harmed by the tariffs by paying these producers to keep silent about the negative consequences they suffer as a result of the tariffs
It’s too bad that American consumers, who suffer net losses of spending power as a result of the tariffs – people Amity Shlaes might call “the forgotten Americans” –aren’t as politically potent as farmers. Were these American consumers more politically organized, Trump would never have imposed his tariffs in the first place.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030
