And has nothing at all to do with tariffs.

In terms of defense, we don’t enact tariffs – we either sell or don’t sell, based on our relationship with the buyer.

And before someone cites WWII, that era is gone – modern warfare moves too fast to use the ‘human/machine-wave’, and ‘pull an army out of your rear when attacked, keep almost no army during peace’ tactics of WWII (build it faster than they can kill it, converting civilian production, etc)…

You can’t build fighter jets or modern armor in car factories, nor can you get a civillian yacht-maker to produce destroyers… Specialized, defense-only firms do all of this now (there’s a little overlap in aviation, where defense contractors actually still make civillian-use products – but that’s still within-the-industry, with no conversion potential)…

Since we now maintain a permanent standing military & full-time defense industry, there is no argument that ‘not protecting’ failing civilian industries somehow hurts our defense…

I have no problem with Defense being a ‘US and US-Allies sourced’ sort of thing…

I do have a problem with the use of tariffs in any situation, ever…

A successful industry doesn’t need government tariff protection.

Only failing industries – those that cannot compete on the merits of their products & inventions – need it.

And I reject Pat (isolationist & Nazi-sympathizer) Buchanan as an authority on anything, just like I reject Ron Paul. They are the same ilk, if slightly different philosophies…

Here are my problems with tariffs:

1) Tariffs weaken domestic industries, by protecting them from foreign competition. This leads to lazy, non-innovating vertically-integrated firms, encourages unionisim, and allows salaries to spiral upwards out of control.

Tariffs do the same thing to wages & expenses that federal student loans do to tuition, employer-provided health insurance does to health-care, and Fannie/Freddie did to home prices.

The classic example of an industry destroyed by protective tariffs, is the auto industry. Without tariffs, the US automakers would have been forced to maintain a sustainable business model by the pressure of un-altered competition with foreign makers. Wages and benefits would have stayed under control, the unions would never have become so pervasive, and there would have been no 2009 bankruptcy/bailout. Also product quality would have been forced to improve, as the ‘price advantage’ of being tariff protected would not have been there.

Instead, the US auto industry turned out sub-standard products (unless you wanted a V8 sports car or a full-size-plus pickup truck), allowed unions whatever they wanted (See ‘jobs bank’) and let costs spiral upward – there was no pressure not to.

Without tariffs, the market would have prevented this absurdity…

2) Tariffs are a HIDDEN TAX on all of us who work in normal, successful industries.

I work for a company that produces no physical product (we sell our customers electronic hardware made in China), and sees no benefit from government ‘protection’. I’m a network engineer, shop almost exclusively at places like Wal Mart & Harbor Freight, and pretty much enjoy the benefits of low prices via cheap foreign labor…

The majority of ‘middle class’ (college educated, white-collar) America is, as it turns out, generally like me…

Why should we pay more for the products we buy – say, have to pay Snap On prices for our personal-use tools, and see our Wal Mart bills triple – just so that a NON-COMPETITIVE industry can be kept afloat by government largesse?

Why should I have my money taken (by higher prices created by tariffs – because tariffs raise DOMESTIC prices too by removing competitive pressure) to support the government ‘creating’ a job for someone else?

Tariffs are simply and entirely incompatible with Conservative free market principles.

They are a form of WELFARE – no better than AFDC or Food Stamps.

But at least unions can be countered with outsourcing.

Jefferson was an economic idiot.

We needed a central bank, and still do need one.

There is and was nothing good about the gold standard.

with non-Paulite libertarians, who’s ‘beef’ with the FED is that it’s a government-created monopoly, and favor some sort of competing-currency system rather than gold.

Of course, I still don’t agree with them – mainly because the only way to have multiple ‘monies’ and no central bank(s) is to return to commodity-barter – a horridly inefficient system when viewed from the perspective of a real human rather than a theoretical ‘omniscient consumer’ in academic economics.

But I give them credit for thinking outside the ‘gold and silver’ box…

In the end, the advantages of money being it’s own commodity outweigh any disadvantages – ESPECIALLY in an economy with no significant cash-savings (and thus one that is largely immune to the effects of all but the most severe inflation).

Capitalisim isn’t supposed to be fair.

It’s supposed to be ruthlessly efficient.

The false-premise is that we actually NEED our corporations to compete with China.

The REALITY is that China is doing us a service by helping us purge dead-weight from our economy.

We DO NOT NEED TO COMPETE in those industries – let the Chinese have all the low-wage, unskilled labor work…

America can compete in other fields that the Chinese as a nation (due to their Communist government) lack the education, originality & inventiveness to master.

The idea is that the US economy, without tariffs, will SPECIALIZE in high-skill, high-education industries, and leave the grunt-work to the 3rd-world. Americans will be forced by market pressure to achieve the skills required to make a living in an economy WITHOUT unskilled union manufacturing (leading to a smarter, more skilled population) and American companies will become the best in the world at a very specific set of industries – and STAY THAT WAY due to a lack of government protection making it a matter of corporate life and death.

It’s simply an all-around better way.

We do not need Americans in $1/day jobs. And just because the US govt strong-arms US corps into overpaying, doesn’t make the jobs in question actually WORTH what folks are paid here to do them.