All the headlines should read: “Americans have paid over $150B for the Trump tariffs, so far” or $441 per person (if you count every person in the country, $580 if you just count adults)
But think of all the tax cuts for the rich they can finance with that!
At this point they’ve run out of tax cuts and they’re just going with subsidies (welfare) for the rich.
so far
Just half a year. End afaiu he isn’t finished with tariffs yet. Would (or Will?) love to see the balance after one year.
I thought it was just July?
If I’m reading correctly July was a record month bringing the year total to 150B
You mean to say that you’ve stolen $150B from working class Americans on the sorts of goods they can’t live without, like groceries, home appliances, and the like? Good job!
It’s ok because manufacturing has come back. According to some reich wing people I know…
Manufacturing lies is WAYYY up.
Who benifits from the tariffs? Who pays the tariffs? Did it cost more than 150b to gain 150b?
Broad tariffs are basically a sales tax with many extra steps and massive inefficiencies.
Sales taxes are of course, regressive, they disproportionately harm the poor.
He and his cronies. Notice how the markets will always spike merely a few hours just before he announces them; certain people know ahead and will buy tons of stocks accordingly. It’s blatant market manipulation, done in plain sight.
These tariffs also gives him the illusion of power over other nations, which he craves most, like the bully he is.
The person or company who imports the goods pays the tariffs. The tariffs go to the US Treasury where they are mixed with other revenue like income tax. The government then spends that money on all of the usual stuff.
Just to add, the company importing those goods then increases prices to make up for the expense, passing the costs to consumers (Americans). I think that is an important note.
One can use that same logic to argue for the abolition of sales (and corporate) tax in general?
It is important to note because trump is pretending it isn’t a tax, it’s not logic meant to abolish all taxes. The comment seemed pretty tame for you to pull that out of it.
The real problem is that people can’t afford an extra 40% tax on top of what we have now. We don’t need to abolish taxes, we need to bring them up for specific groups, mostly the ultra rich.
Ehhh I would say in a general sense that sales tax absolutely should be done away with. Really any regressive tax, including payroll taxes (there is a cap, so higher income earners don’t pay their relative share), the current structure of property taxes, tolls, so on.
Even then I wouldn’t call it good, just better, but that’d be a whole separate discussion.
Sales tax, yes, corporate tax… No.
Sales tax is functionally a tax on the lower income anyway, since it has a more substantial impact on a lower income vs a higher income. Its regressive.
Unless we are specifically talking some sort of luxuries tax based on a value that changes with an index (like a luxury housing tax, median values against area median income + percentage overhead before additional tax, etc, or speculation/vacancy taxes, taxes on private jets or yachts, so on).
Corporate tax is a tax on profit though (talking in generalities here obviously, there are many types of taxes), which doesn’t apply the same way here in terms of a direct consumer cost, so I’m not sure what you are driving at in that aspect.
Corporate tax is a tax on profit though (talking in generalities here obviously,
Thank for that remark, important distinction indeed.
It is, and unfortunately its also what’s most often abused.
Corporate tax (and what’s more equivalent, individual income tax) should see the same progressive taxation, where higher profits yield higher tax rates above each of those thresholds.
Unfortunately, corporations play a lot of games with accounting to effectively reduce those profits and not pay their share (or not at all, even with some extremely large corporations), effectively shifting the tax burden onto individuals instead. Then, of course, those individuals benefitting most from the corporations not paying their fair share are also playing accounting games to reduce their own tax burden, further shifting the burden onto lower income individuals.
So when you combine that with increased costs for everyday consumer goods, you see an increasingly higher burden on lower and middle income, even higher income individuals until you get to the extremely wealthy outliers. The impact is greater the lower you go in income level though.
Maybe in a properly functioning capitalistic system that ensures truly fair competition, prevents monopolies (or near/effective monopolies), and properly manages limited resources (and I’m sure other things that didn’t immediately come to mind). Not so much what exists currently.
Let me rephrase: in the system that exists, today, the argument “it’s consumers that end up paying” works the same for the tarrifs as for sales tax?
Sales tax is imposed by the states (and sometimes smaller localities) to help fund their operations, not the feds (although the tariffs have effectively amounted to that without actually saying it) - people can move to places like Delaware if they have a problem with that. These tariffs are universal, and since the manufacturing of the bulk of products has been offshored LONG ago, there’s no alternative.
Gotta love people like you who deliberately ignore the detailed nuances because it destroys your so-called argument.
Fucking hell what a toxic, ad-hominem, reply!
(although the tariffs have effectively amounted to that without actually saying it)
Especially considering we’re saying the same thing.
Politics really destroys the logical thinking part in many people’s brains.
so, military and harassing citizens?
Unmarked vans, black sites, and plain clothes SS don’t just grow on trees
(We also will not be spending any of that money on trees)
So, is there an incentive for the tariff payer to keep cost lower and not pass it on to consumer?
The buyer pays the tariff. There’s always an incentive for buyers to keep costs low, tariff or not.
For sellers there might be an incentive to reduce prices under some circumstances:
- If the seller can’t compete with American products once tariff is added - rarely applicable and you may as well see American products increase their prices to increase profits
- If your customers are very price sensitive and might go without your product or find an alternative (so not medication, but some foods perhaps) but you would expect those products to already have low margins so you can’t really reduce your prices
If you compare the groups “US” vs “rest of the world” then a transfer of wealth to the US has been observed.
If you compare the groups “US government” vs “US citizens” then a transfer of wealth to the US government has been observed. That’s what the meme is referring to.
Of course the larger goal of mercantillism is to protect and boost local manufacturing. Too early to tell if that’s happening as reshoring takes years.
The government is a funnel, not an endpoint. Keep following the money. Blows my mind people led around by the nose by the GOP still believe their rhetoric about this - just proves the groupthink and lack of critical thinking going on with their voters.
Blows my mind people led around by the nose by the GOP still believe their rhetoric about this
Why so adversarial? I’m not even part of that game, on a totally different continent. Blows my mind that the so many people think politics is binary groupthink - sanctimonious indeed!
The observations I mentioned above are factual. Blows my mind that it’s so easy to get angry at measurements.
The government is a funnel, not an endpoint. Keep following the money.
That’s endless, wouldn’t you agree? Especially considering all money is, is someone else’s debt.
And then to the rich (same thing in many cases but ya know some rich are donors instead of in office)
Yeah but it will all go to Billionaires in the form of shady government contracts. So trickle up economics.
The up-trickle billionaires are currently living with:
That comma is bearing the weight of a collapsed star.
Right, the party that thinks we can’t have healthcare because the rich will make us pay for it suddenly thinks foreign countries will pay for our bullshit.
In 2016 he said that Mexico would pay for the wall and Americans believed it.
Yay! We’re winning!
Trump: I need money. I couldn’t care less who will pay it. Can you suggest any other source of free money for my needs? No? Shut up and pay then.
Trump would say “could care less”
or I would assume so, anyways
You can’t teach old Trump new covfefes.
The federal reserve could use the money printer.
Trump: On it! Just need to do something about that damn Powel guy.
For all the bravado and fighting spirit Americans are supposed to have they are always ready to say “thank you sir can I have some more?” If the draconic tax increases come from white supremacists.
All that bravado has always been bullshit though. Going all the way back to the American Revolution, our history has always been about the rich and powerful letting the lower class die to achieve their goals. We were founded off the idea of serving the wealthy.
oh but he is going to get rid of income tax…later.
It’s from US you fucking dumb shit
I wonder who that’s all going to
I know the guy who designed the wheel they spin when coming up with numbers for the masses.
Pat Sajak?
