For the past year Donald Trump’s tariff mania has shaken the world economy. Firms and governments have been forced to contend with an ever-shifting patchwork of levies, deals and exemptions.
Having surged after Mr Trump launched his all-out trade world war in April, the money they earn for the government is no longer rising.
Before Mr Trump’s second term, America was collecting about $8bn-9bn a month in tariffs plus associated taxes and fees. By October it was snatching a bit over $30bn, equivalent to about 1.2% of GDP if sustained for a year (see chart 1)
Yale University’s Budget Lab estimates that 15% of the money earned from Mr Trump’s duties is cancelled out by lower tax revenues elsewhere owing to slower GDP growth.
Some/most of that might be reversed on SCOTUS decisions, who knows.
More and more coming around to the idea that tariffs, while economically illiterate and useless, might not be so bad.
30bn in extracted value is bad, but the federal government snatches up that from income taxes in less than a week:
So the idea being we redistribute tax burden from where it's super heavy to where it's kind of low... of course that won't happen, and the tariffs just ADD to the pile of taxation-related burden. Then WHY BOTHER?!
archive: https://archive.md/mIRe3
Why do I feel like the mainstream consensus opinion on everything these days is overreact
pretty much yeah.
I could answer "algo," "partisanship" or "dopamine nation" but what do I know
Yeah. All of the above is prolly the right answer.
Also, by raising the price level in the domestic economy, tariffs indirectly cause bracket creep in income taxes.
True, didn't think about that