You have probably read a number of articles for and against President Trump’s tariffs. Many Republicans old enough to remember George H.W. Bush’s NAFTA deal may find themselves rooting for policies they once opposed. Tariffs, after all, as any Econ 101 student is told, create a “deadweight loss” in a market. But so do all taxes.
Someone who made that connection in the days of Bush’s failed “Read my lips, no new taxes” pledge was Pat Buchanan. Income taxes, whether individual or corporate, are also waste creators in markets, and they don’t give any advantage to domestic production like tariffs do. Buchanan suggested, why not replace corporate taxes with tariffs? Dick Young recently examined the Buchanan plan further at Young’s World Money Forecast. Read his analysis here.
