Charles Payne: 'THE FACTS': A Brief History of Tariffs in The US

"Making Money' host Charles Payne discusses the truth and history of tariffs." 

Source:FOX Business anchor Charles Payne.

From FOX Business

I'm going to start this off by paraphrasing something that Charles Payne said. He said something like: 

"Of course American corporations don't like tariffs because they think it will hurt their bottomline. We shouldn't measure the strength of the American economy based on how American corporations are doing." 

And my response to that would be: I didn't know that Charles Payne was a graduate of the Robert Reich School of Economics. Which of course would be located at Harvard, or Berkeley, if such school even existed. I say that half-jokingly, because that's what tariff supporters or people who feel the need to kiss Donald Trump's feet (to put it mildly) every time that he does anything controversial, sound like. Regardless of what their real-life politics might be because they feel that they have to do that to stay in business and to keep their careers going. They're forced to make asses (to be frank) out of themselves on national TV and say things that they simply don't believe, in order to appease their dear leader.

I'm in my late 40s now, so I remember Ronald Reagan being President in the 1980s. He was a Conservative Republican in almost every real sense of the term. This is what he said about the "free market economy" back in 1981 during his first year as President: 

"We who live in free market societies believe that growth, prosperity and, ultimately, human fulfillment are created from the bottom up, not the government down.  Only when the human spirit is allowed to invent and create, only when individuals are given a personal stake in deciding economic policies and benefiting from their success – only then can societies remain alive, dynamic, prosperous, progressive and free.

Trust the people.  This is the one irrefutable lesson of the entire post-war period, contradicting the notion that rigid government controls are essential to economic development.  The societies that have achieved the most spectacular, broad-based progress are neither the most tightly controlled, nor the biggest in size, nor the wealthiest in natural resources.  No, what unites them all is their willingness to believe in the magic of the marketplace." 

From AEI

Yes, I'm old enough to remember when Republicans were Conservatives (by-en-large) and not seen as old school political dinosaurs, that Conservative Republicans are seen as today. You will almost never hear any MAGA member (who are the real RINOS) ever quote Ronald Reagan when it comes to the "free market", law and order, the U.S. Constitution, limited government, etc, because they know their dear leader Donald Trump simply doesn't believe in conservative values. 

So as a JFK Democrat, (the people who are called the New Democrats, that became popular in the 1990s, people who I call the real Liberals) I'm going to give you my own position on tariffs. 

When you raise the costs of goods and doing business in America, the costs of those goods and business goes up. It doesn't get paid for by corporations or government's (domestic or foreign) but by the consumers themselves, because businesses just pass those new costs onto their consumers. We already saw the stock market take a big hit today even with the President's announcement of his tariffs that he's planning this weekend. Tariffs and tax hikes on goods and business simply makes those things more expensive in this country. Other terms for tariff are national sales tax, or national consumption tax. 

And Charles Payne can talk all he wants about the "facts" that Americans will be paying less in taxation under President Trump, which would offset the tariffs. But according to Econo Fact, 60% of Americans only got 500 bucks back in tax relief under President Trump's 2017 tax cuts. So 10 bucks a week is supposed to pay for a 25% increase in food and milk? I don't think so. The wealthy won't be hurt by this, they may even like it. But the overwhelmingly majority of American voters are middle class Americans, who can't afford tax hikes right now. And putting tariffs on their goods and services, is giving them a 25% tax increase.

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