Reverse Robin Hood

The money collected from tariffs ultimately goes to the U.S. Treasury (like your federal income tax payments). The tariffs are initially paid by importers and collected by customs. These tariffs then raise the prices we pay by the same amount as the tariff. So the tariff is actually being absorbed by the consumer buying the final product here in the United States whether it is a car, eggs or a refrigerator.

The Trump administration and the Republicans in Congress are then going to pass (or extend) a huge income tax cut (like they did in the first Trump administration). While these tax cuts do help us little folks, slightly, the vast majority of the tax benefit accrues to the top 10% of federal taxpayers.

Any benefit tariffs provide to U.S. producers is many years in the future and almost all economists decry trade wars as disruptive to markets and antithetical to normal trade policy between countries. We have relatively high wages here in the United States so we generally produce information (think computer software) rather than trinkets for export.

This tariff scheme is effectively a huge transfer of wealth from working/consuming folks to the rich folks. And we keep falling for it. They laugh at us all the way to the bank.

Walter Skinner

San Bruno