Robert
13th January 2010, 23:27
What are your thoughts on trade tariffs? When I buy a product Made in China, which includes, well, just about everything I buy except food, beer, cars, paper, and some clothes, I feel as though I am contributing to U.S. unemployment (http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/bp219/), exerting downward pressure on U.S. wages, and bolstering the prevailing low wages in China. And so tariffs on Chinese products come to mind ....
I suppose the money I "save" by buying Chinese products frees up a certain percentage of my income to consume more domestic goods and services, but there is still a serious imbalance and U.S. workers are the primary victims.
The only thing I can think to do about it is to either shun imports or urge my representatives to call for tariffs on China; I could try and justify this on the grounds of solidarity with oppressed Chinese wage slaves or on the grounds that imports destroy domestic jobs, as the above link manifestly demonstrates.
But I wonder about unintended consequences: the Chinese would of course retaliate by importing fewer (by taxing via tariffs) U.S. products, which includes some pricey items like airliners and machine tools. Plus a Chinese tariff on U.S. timber, scrap metal, wheat and corn would hurt family farmers (like Archer Daniels Midland:rolleyes:).
Related question: is there much difference between a minimum wage law and a tariff? If we shouldn't pay U.S. workers less than $7.25/hour, surely we shouldn't support the suppression of Chinese wages far below that by buying their products. Wouldn't a protective tariff at least be consistent with the minimum wage law?
And then there are all the other countries with low wages that export to the USA. Why not tariffs on Vietnamese and Mexican products? I realize that one answer is "trade wars can destroy the economies of all the participating countries," but things are already in a downward slide, at least from the U.S. worker's point of view. Presumably the same discussion is going on in the UK, which imports tons of Chinese products.
I suppose the money I "save" by buying Chinese products frees up a certain percentage of my income to consume more domestic goods and services, but there is still a serious imbalance and U.S. workers are the primary victims.
The only thing I can think to do about it is to either shun imports or urge my representatives to call for tariffs on China; I could try and justify this on the grounds of solidarity with oppressed Chinese wage slaves or on the grounds that imports destroy domestic jobs, as the above link manifestly demonstrates.
But I wonder about unintended consequences: the Chinese would of course retaliate by importing fewer (by taxing via tariffs) U.S. products, which includes some pricey items like airliners and machine tools. Plus a Chinese tariff on U.S. timber, scrap metal, wheat and corn would hurt family farmers (like Archer Daniels Midland:rolleyes:).
Related question: is there much difference between a minimum wage law and a tariff? If we shouldn't pay U.S. workers less than $7.25/hour, surely we shouldn't support the suppression of Chinese wages far below that by buying their products. Wouldn't a protective tariff at least be consistent with the minimum wage law?
And then there are all the other countries with low wages that export to the USA. Why not tariffs on Vietnamese and Mexican products? I realize that one answer is "trade wars can destroy the economies of all the participating countries," but things are already in a downward slide, at least from the U.S. worker's point of view. Presumably the same discussion is going on in the UK, which imports tons of Chinese products.