As the un-American left lays the groundwork for undoing President Trump’s second-term policy goals, one of the areas in which Trump’s enemies expect to have an easy target is trade policy.

Since conservatives believe in free markets (leftists do not), conservatives have generally espoused the idea that taxes are bad.  We go farther than that, in our rhetoric, in fact; we often say, “Taxation is theft.”

The left therefore declares, “A tariff is just a tax, and you believe that taxes are bad, so you must oppose it!”

Note that leftists don’t say that they themselves must oppose tariffs.  During the four long and painful years of the Biden-Harris regime, they never repealed any American tariffs — neither the ones that preceded President Trump nor the ones that President Trump implemented.  They are all in place still, and in 2024, the Biden-Harris regime revised a number of those tariffs upward, some drastically — such as the tariffs on rechargeable batteries, magnets, and electric vehicles.

So leftists are using an argument that they don’t believe, strictly because they hope it will work on their opposition.  They don’t mind taxes at all; they just hope to create division among Republicans.

Well, guess what, liberals!  We know.  We know that a tariff is a tax.

And we have news for the left: the right actually does not “oppose all taxation, by definition.”

The right opposes taxation that is higher than it needs to be, taxation that is imposed illegally, and taxation that is intentionally destructive to the economy. 

Unfortunately, this does cover most taxes in today’s America — but because they are too high, illegally imposed, or destructive. 

The right acknowledges that you need some tax revenue — to provide for national defense and a criminal justice system, to manage roadways and a stable currency, to hold elections and maintain an ambassadors’ corps, and to perform the other constitutionally mandated duties of government.

One of the pillars of conservative thought for the past half-century is economist Arthur Laffer’s brilliant graph, known as the Laffer Curve, an arc showing tax rates on one axis and the revenue they produce on the other.  At the beginning, as tax rates climb, they produce ever more revenue — until the rates are raised to a point of diminishing returns, beyond which ever higher tax rates produce less and less revenue, because with every kind of tax, at some point, the rate is so high that it discourages the activity being taxed.

We on the right understand this graph.  The left does not.

Set your city’s sales tax rate too high, and you discourage shopping, driving shoppers to other towns.  Set your property tax rate too high, and you discourage people from moving into your county, even encouraging residents to move away.  Set your income taxes too high, and you discourage people from working harder, if at all.  Set your capital gains taxes too high, and you discourage people from investing.

All this is the case from coast to coast, with virtually every form of taxation.  It doesn’t bother Democrats a bit.

What President Trump and the MAGA movement are doing with tariffs is not entirely original.  In fact, it’s in line with tariff policy throughout history.  President Trump and the MAGA movement recognize that the United States (and, frankly, the entire developed world) purchase too many imports from Mainland (Red) China, at the expense of their own domestic production.  Tariffs are being used carefully and pointedly, to raise the cost of imported products so that people will buy less of them, and will instead buy from other sources — either manufacturers in countries other than China or domestic suppliers right here at home.

Through this careful application of tariffs, President Trump and the MAGA movement are not only recognizing the truth of the Laffer Curve, but are using that “point of diminishing returns” for the common good.

Every time a higher tariff rate causes a domestic importer to reject the Chinese product and choose either the other non-Chinese foreign supplier or a domestic supplier, it’s a gift to the entire world, because not just the United States, but the entire world needs to be freed from dependence on that corrupt, abusive, saber-rattling enemy nation.

Remember: by unrelenting national policy, China uses currency manipulation, public-private partnerships, export subsidies, intellectual property theft, and slave labor to ensure that its products look so cheap that nobody else can compete with them.  Only through such anti-dumping tactics as an aggressive punitive tariff policy have we been able to slowly wrest some of that activity away from China in the years since President Trump’s first waves of punitive tariffs were introduced in 2018.

Frankly, in reviewing all the taxes we have in America, the strange thing really isn’t that tariffs discourage the process being taxed (the importation of foreign goods); that is so obvious that it goes without saying.  What’s strange is that more people don’t realize that this truth applies to all other taxes as well.

There’s an old saying in economics: when you subsidize something, you get more of it; when you tax something, you get less of it.

Tariffs are, arguably, the most honest taxes on Earth, because nobody has any illusions about them.  They are protectionist, by definition.  Set high tariffs, and you discourage people from importing. 

Wouldn’t it be interesting if the hypocritical left were to admit the fact that the Laffer Curve demonstrates so beautifully: that high income taxes discourage work, that high capital gains taxes discourage investors, that high sales taxes drive shoppers away?  But leftists blind themselves to these facts while attempting to shock the right about the effects of tariffs.

In the short term, do these import tariffs raise the cost to the consumer?  Sure, if that foreign source is the only potential source for the product.  But if the tariffs are targeted — say, on the goods of one specific enemy nation, like China — then they don’t necessarily raise prices.  They just redirect people’s behavior toward purchasing from friendlier sources (which may start out more expensive but will soon become cost-effective as volume grows).

Over the past 40 years, we have watched underhanded Chinese practices seize whole industries away from the free world.  Their currency manipulation, slave labor, and other crooked tactics have been especially focused on critical components.  We may still make washing machines, cars and trucks, power tools, and robotics here in the USA, but the factories that make them are dependent on China for wiring and sensors, printed circuit boards and lithium ion batteries, pumps and motors, and thousands more such key components. 

The Chinese have made the Western world as dependent on them as a drug pusher does to his customer base of hopeless addicts.

The incoming Trump administration will repeal the outrageous regulations that have driven American factories out of the country or out of business.  It will pass an omnibus tax cut that will encourage entrepreneurs to quickly start up new factories to replace the ones we’ve lost and encourage existing manufacturers to expand so they can compete for the increased demand that’s sure to come.

The Trump administration’s plan for the targeted use of punitive tariffs on Chinese goods will in fact be especially thrilling, because unlike most taxes, they are essentially voluntary; an American importer can avoid paying the punitive tariff by simply choosing to buy the competing product from a non-Chinese vendor who is therefore immune to it.

The situation is reminiscent of a wonderful old comparison that I recall Newt Gingrich using frequently: the leftist is proudest when a new dependent signs up for a welfare program; the conservative is proudest when a former welfare recipient becomes self-sufficient and no longer needs welfare.

By the same token, the leftist is happiest with taxes that provide an ever-increasing stream of revenue to government coffers; the conservative is happiest when a carefully designed tax causes American businesses to support new, honest vendors, freeing themselves from both that tax and the corrupt clutches of the politburo in Beijing.

John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation manager, trade compliance trainer, and speaker.  Read his book on the surprisingly numerous varieties of vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel), his political satires on the Biden-Harris years (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I, II, and III), and his nonfiction book on the 2024 election, Current Events and the Issues of Our Age, all available in eBook or paperback, only on Amazon.

Image via Pixabay.