An ‘America First’ Trump Trade Policy

[cnelsen]

Donald Trump’s election triumph is among the more astonishing in history.

Yet if he wishes to become the father of a new “America First”majority party, he must make good on his solemn promise:

To end the trade deficits that have bled our country of scores of thousands of factories, and to create millions of manufacturing jobs in the USA.

Fail here, and those slim majorities in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin disappear.

The president-elect takes credit for jawboning William Clay Ford to keep his Lincoln plant in Louisville. He is now jawboning Carrier air conditioning to stay in Indiana and not move to Mexico.

Good for him. But these are baby steps toward ending the $800 billion trade deficits in goods America runs annually, or bringing back factories and creating millions of new manufacturing jobs in the USA.

The NAFTA Republicans tell us the plants and jobs are never coming back, that we live in a globalized world, that production will now be done where it can be done cheapest–in Mexico, China, Asia.

Yet, on Nov. 8, Americans rejected this defeatism rooted in the tracts of 19th-century British scribblers and the ideology of 20th-century globalists like Woodrow Wilson and FDR.

America responded to Trump’s call for a new nationalism rooted in the economic principles and patriotism of Hamilton and the men of Mount Rushmore: Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt.

The president-elect has declared the TPP dead, and says he and his negotiators will walk away rather than accept another NAFTA.

Again, good, but again, not good enough, not nearly.

The New International Economic Order imposed upon us for decades has to be overthrown.

For the root cause of the trade deficits bleeding us lies in U.S. tax laws and trade policies that punish companies that stay in America and reward companies that move production overseas.

Executives move plants to Mexico, Asia and China for the same reason U.S. industrialists moved plants from the Frost Belt to the Sun Belt. Given the lower wages and lighter regulations, they can produce more cheaply there.

In dealing with advanced economies like Japan, Germany, and the EU, another critical factor is at work against us.

Since the Kennedy Round of trade negotiations, 50 years ago, international trade deals have reduced tariffs to insignificance.

But our trade rivals have replaced the tariffs with value-added taxes on imports from the USA. Even to belong to the EU, a country must have a VAT of at least 15 percent.

As Kevin Kearns of the U.S. Business and Industry Council writes, Europeans have replaced tariffs on U.S. goods with a VAT on U.S. goods, while rebating the VAT on Europe’s exports to us.

Some 160 countries impose VAT taxes. Along with currency manipulation, this is how European and Asian protectionists stick it to the Americans, whose armed forces have defended them for 60 years.

We lose at trade negotiations, even before we sit down at the table, because our adversaries declare their VAT nonnegotiable. And we accept it.

Trump has to persuade Congress to deal him and our trade negotiators our own high cards, without our having to go to the WTO and asking, “Mother, may I?”

Like this writer, Kearns argues for an 18 percent VAT on all goods and services entering the United States. All tax revenue raised by the VAT–hundreds of billions–should be used to reduce U.S. taxes, beginning by ending the income tax on small business and reducing to the lowest rate in the advanced world the U.S. corporate income tax.

The price of foreign-made goods in U.S. stores would rise, giving a competitive advantage to goods made in America. And with a border VAT of 18 percent, every U.S. corporate executive would have to consider the higher cost of leaving the United States to produce abroad.

Every foreign manufacturer, to maintain free access to the U.S. market of $17 trillion, greatest on earth, would have to consider shifting production–factories, technology, jobs–to the USA.

The incentive to produce abroad would diminish and disappear. The incentive to produce here would grow correspondingly.

Inversions–U.S. companies seeking lower tax rates by moving to places like Ireland–would end. Foreign companies and banks would be clamoring to get into the United States.

With a zero corporate tax, minority businesses would spring up. Existing businesses would have more cash to hire. America would shove China aside as the Enterprise Zone of the world.

Most important, by having Americans buy more from each other, and rely more on each other for the necessities of life, U.S. trade and tax policies would work to create a greater interdependence among us, rather than pull us apart as they do today.

Why not write new tax and trade laws that bring us together, recreating the one nation and people we once were–and can be again?

Pat Buchanan

 

[Tommy Tainant]

Donald Trump’s election triumph is among the more astonishing in history.

Yet if he wishes to become the father of a new “America First”majority party, he must make good on his solemn promise:

To end the trade deficits that have bled our country of scores of thousands of factories, and to create millions of manufacturing jobs in the USA.

Fail here, and those slim majorities in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin disappear.

The president-elect takes credit for jawboning William Clay Ford to keep his Lincoln plant in Louisville. He is now jawboning Carrier air conditioning to stay in Indiana and not move to Mexico.

Good for him. But these are baby steps toward ending the $800 billion trade deficits in goods America runs annually, or bringing back factories and creating millions of new manufacturing jobs in the USA.

The NAFTA Republicans tell us the plants and jobs are never coming back, that we live in a globalized world, that production will now be done where it can be done cheapest–in Mexico, China, Asia.

Yet, on Nov. 8, Americans rejected this defeatism rooted in the tracts of 19th-century British scribblers and the ideology of 20th-century globalists like Woodrow Wilson and FDR.

America responded to Trump’s call for a new nationalism rooted in the economic principles and patriotism of Hamilton and the men of Mount Rushmore: Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt.

The president-elect has declared the TPP dead, and says he and his negotiators will walk away rather than accept another NAFTA.

Again, good, but again, not good enough, not nearly.

The New International Economic Order imposed upon us for decades has to be overthrown.

For the root cause of the trade deficits bleeding us lies in U.S. tax laws and trade policies that punish companies that stay in America and reward companies that move production overseas.

Executives move plants to Mexico, Asia and China for the same reason U.S. industrialists moved plants from the Frost Belt to the Sun Belt. Given the lower wages and lighter regulations, they can produce more cheaply there.

In dealing with advanced economies like Japan, Germany, and the EU, another critical factor is at work against us.

Since the Kennedy Round of trade negotiations, 50 years ago, international trade deals have reduced tariffs to insignificance.

But our trade rivals have replaced the tariffs with value-added taxes on imports from the USA. Even to belong to the EU, a country must have a VAT of at least 15 percent.

As Kevin Kearns of the U.S. Business and Industry Council writes, Europeans have replaced tariffs on U.S. goods with a VAT on U.S. goods, while rebating the VAT on Europe’s exports to us.

Some 160 countries impose VAT taxes. Along with currency manipulation, this is how European and Asian protectionists stick it to the Americans, whose armed forces have defended them for 60 years.

We lose at trade negotiations, even before we sit down at the table, because our adversaries declare their VAT nonnegotiable. And we accept it.

Trump has to persuade Congress to deal him and our trade negotiators our own high cards, without our having to go to the WTO and asking, “Mother, may I?”

Like this writer, Kearns argues for an 18 percent VAT on all goods and services entering the United States. All tax revenue raised by the VAT–hundreds of billions–should be used to reduce U.S. taxes, beginning by ending the income tax on small business and reducing to the lowest rate in the advanced world the U.S. corporate income tax.

The price of foreign-made goods in U.S. stores would rise, giving a competitive advantage to goods made in America. And with a border VAT of 18 percent, every U.S. corporate executive would have to consider the higher cost of leaving the United States to produce abroad.

Every foreign manufacturer, to maintain free access to the U.S. market of $17 trillion, greatest on earth, would have to consider shifting production–factories, technology, jobs–to the USA.

The incentive to produce abroad would diminish and disappear. The incentive to produce here would grow correspondingly.

Inversions–U.S. companies seeking lower tax rates by moving to places like Ireland–would end. Foreign companies and banks would be clamoring to get into the United States.

With a zero corporate tax, minority businesses would spring up. Existing businesses would have more cash to hire. America would shove China aside as the Enterprise Zone of the world.

Most important, by having Americans buy more from each other, and rely more on each other for the necessities of life, U.S. trade and tax policies would work to create a greater interdependence among us, rather than pull us apart as they do today.

Why not write new tax and trade laws that bring us together, recreating the one nation and people we once were–and can be again?

Pat Buchanan

Oh dear. A trading nation should be looking to remove tariffs not raising them.
What this will do is very simple.
1. Cause reciprocal tariffs to be imposed which will kill American exports and lead to more unemployment.
2. Create price rises and inflation which will harm the poor.

 

[beagle9]

Donald Trump’s election triumph is among the more astonishing in history.

Yet if he wishes to become the father of a new “America First”majority party, he must make good on his solemn promise:

To end the trade deficits that have bled our country of scores of thousands of factories, and to create millions of manufacturing jobs in the USA.

Fail here, and those slim majorities in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin disappear.

The president-elect takes credit for jawboning William Clay Ford to keep his Lincoln plant in Louisville. He is now jawboning Carrier air conditioning to stay in Indiana and not move to Mexico.

Good for him. But these are baby steps toward ending the $800 billion trade deficits in goods America runs annually, or bringing back factories and creating millions of new manufacturing jobs in the USA.

The NAFTA Republicans tell us the plants and jobs are never coming back, that we live in a globalized world, that production will now be done where it can be done cheapest–in Mexico, China, Asia.

Yet, on Nov. 8, Americans rejected this defeatism rooted in the tracts of 19th-century British scribblers and the ideology of 20th-century globalists like Woodrow Wilson and FDR.

America responded to Trump’s call for a new nationalism rooted in the economic principles and patriotism of Hamilton and the men of Mount Rushmore: Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt.

The president-elect has declared the TPP dead, and says he and his negotiators will walk away rather than accept another NAFTA.

Again, good, but again, not good enough, not nearly.

The New International Economic Order imposed upon us for decades has to be overthrown.

For the root cause of the trade deficits bleeding us lies in U.S. tax laws and trade policies that punish companies that stay in America and reward companies that move production overseas.

Executives move plants to Mexico, Asia and China for the same reason U.S. industrialists moved plants from the Frost Belt to the Sun Belt. Given the lower wages and lighter regulations, they can produce more cheaply there.

In dealing with advanced economies like Japan, Germany, and the EU, another critical factor is at work against us.

Since the Kennedy Round of trade negotiations, 50 years ago, international trade deals have reduced tariffs to insignificance.

But our trade rivals have replaced the tariffs with value-added taxes on imports from the USA. Even to belong to the EU, a country must have a VAT of at least 15 percent.

As Kevin Kearns of the U.S. Business and Industry Council writes, Europeans have replaced tariffs on U.S. goods with a VAT on U.S. goods, while rebating the VAT on Europe’s exports to us.

Some 160 countries impose VAT taxes. Along with currency manipulation, this is how European and Asian protectionists stick it to the Americans, whose armed forces have defended them for 60 years.

We lose at trade negotiations, even before we sit down at the table, because our adversaries declare their VAT nonnegotiable. And we accept it.

Trump has to persuade Congress to deal him and our trade negotiators our own high cards, without our having to go to the WTO and asking, “Mother, may I?”

Like this writer, Kearns argues for an 18 percent VAT on all goods and services entering the United States. All tax revenue raised by the VAT–hundreds of billions–should be used to reduce U.S. taxes, beginning by ending the income tax on small business and reducing to the lowest rate in the advanced world the U.S. corporate income tax.

The price of foreign-made goods in U.S. stores would rise, giving a competitive advantage to goods made in America. And with a border VAT of 18 percent, every U.S. corporate executive would have to consider the higher cost of leaving the United States to produce abroad.

Every foreign manufacturer, to maintain free access to the U.S. market of $17 trillion, greatest on earth, would have to consider shifting production–factories, technology, jobs–to the USA.

The incentive to produce abroad would diminish and disappear. The incentive to produce here would grow correspondingly.

Inversions–U.S. companies seeking lower tax rates by moving to places like Ireland–would end. Foreign companies and banks would be clamoring to get into the United States.

With a zero corporate tax, minority businesses would spring up. Existing businesses would have more cash to hire. America would shove China aside as the Enterprise Zone of the world.

Most important, by having Americans buy more from each other, and rely more on each other for the necessities of life, U.S. trade and tax policies would work to create a greater interdependence among us, rather than pull us apart as they do today.

Why not write new tax and trade laws that bring us together, recreating the one nation and people we once were–and can be again?

Pat Buchanan

Oh dear. A trading nation should be looking to remove tariffs not raising them.
What this will do is very simple.
1. Cause reciprocal tariffs to be imposed which will kill American exports and lead to more unemployment.
2. Create price rises and inflation which will harm the poor.

. Isn't what you say fear mongering ???? Like the opt points out, this nation is so huge and resources filled, that we could actually trade amongst ourselves for decades or centuries without even noticing the trade losses. The world should be begging us to trade or engage with them, instead of us taking it up the y-zoo like we have been fooled by our own to believe we have had to do. It all comes back to balance and the population within that sets the stage for having a healthy U.S. economy or it should be this way. If we engaged all sectors, and re-engaged our mindsets to change for the better, then we could become great again. Have to address years and years of lies, deception and corrupt policies designed to make corporate CEO's and government puppets kings while we all turned into struggling servitude that was being told that there was no way out ever.

 

[cnelsen]

Donald Trump’s election triumph is among the more astonishing in history.

Yet if he wishes to become the father of a new “America First”majority party, he must make good on his solemn promise:

To end the trade deficits that have bled our country of scores of thousands of factories, and to create millions of manufacturing jobs in the USA.

Fail here, and those slim majorities in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin disappear.

The president-elect takes credit for jawboning William Clay Ford to keep his Lincoln plant in Louisville. He is now jawboning Carrier air conditioning to stay in Indiana and not move to Mexico.

Good for him. But these are baby steps toward ending the $800 billion trade deficits in goods America runs annually, or bringing back factories and creating millions of new manufacturing jobs in the USA.

The NAFTA Republicans tell us the plants and jobs are never coming back, that we live in a globalized world, that production will now be done where it can be done cheapest–in Mexico, China, Asia.

Yet, on Nov. 8, Americans rejected this defeatism rooted in the tracts of 19th-century British scribblers and the ideology of 20th-century globalists like Woodrow Wilson and FDR.

America responded to Trump’s call for a new nationalism rooted in the economic principles and patriotism of Hamilton and the men of Mount Rushmore: Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt.

The president-elect has declared the TPP dead, and says he and his negotiators will walk away rather than accept another NAFTA.

Again, good, but again, not good enough, not nearly.

The New International Economic Order imposed upon us for decades has to be overthrown.

For the root cause of the trade deficits bleeding us lies in U.S. tax laws and trade policies that punish companies that stay in America and reward companies that move production overseas.

Executives move plants to Mexico, Asia and China for the same reason U.S. industrialists moved plants from the Frost Belt to the Sun Belt. Given the lower wages and lighter regulations, they can produce more cheaply there.

In dealing with advanced economies like Japan, Germany, and the EU, another critical factor is at work against us.

Since the Kennedy Round of trade negotiations, 50 years ago, international trade deals have reduced tariffs to insignificance.

But our trade rivals have replaced the tariffs with value-added taxes on imports from the USA. Even to belong to the EU, a country must have a VAT of at least 15 percent.

As Kevin Kearns of the U.S. Business and Industry Council writes, Europeans have replaced tariffs on U.S. goods with a VAT on U.S. goods, while rebating the VAT on Europe’s exports to us.

Some 160 countries impose VAT taxes. Along with currency manipulation, this is how European and Asian protectionists stick it to the Americans, whose armed forces have defended them for 60 years.

We lose at trade negotiations, even before we sit down at the table, because our adversaries declare their VAT nonnegotiable. And we accept it.

Trump has to persuade Congress to deal him and our trade negotiators our own high cards, without our having to go to the WTO and asking, “Mother, may I?”

Like this writer, Kearns argues for an 18 percent VAT on all goods and services entering the United States. All tax revenue raised by the VAT–hundreds of billions–should be used to reduce U.S. taxes, beginning by ending the income tax on small business and reducing to the lowest rate in the advanced world the U.S. corporate income tax.

The price of foreign-made goods in U.S. stores would rise, giving a competitive advantage to goods made in America. And with a border VAT of 18 percent, every U.S. corporate executive would have to consider the higher cost of leaving the United States to produce abroad.

Every foreign manufacturer, to maintain free access to the U.S. market of $17 trillion, greatest on earth, would have to consider shifting production–factories, technology, jobs–to the USA.

The incentive to produce abroad would diminish and disappear. The incentive to produce here would grow correspondingly.

Inversions–U.S. companies seeking lower tax rates by moving to places like Ireland–would end. Foreign companies and banks would be clamoring to get into the United States.

With a zero corporate tax, minority businesses would spring up. Existing businesses would have more cash to hire. America would shove China aside as the Enterprise Zone of the world.

Most important, by having Americans buy more from each other, and rely more on each other for the necessities of life, U.S. trade and tax policies would work to create a greater interdependence among us, rather than pull us apart as they do today.

Why not write new tax and trade laws that bring us together, recreating the one nation and people we once were–and can be again?

Pat Buchanan

Oh dear. A trading nation should be looking to remove tariffs not raising them.
What this will do is very simple.
1. Cause reciprocal tariffs to be imposed which will kill American exports and lead to more unemployment.
2. Create price rises and inflation which will harm the poor.

We can't put American workers in direct head-to-head competition with, say, Chinese workers for the simple reason it is way more expensive to be American than to be Chinese. Besides, they already have tariffs in one form or another. Read the article.

 

[WillowTree]

So it is on record that old tommy Tainant wants America to suffer under unfair trade agreements. It is okay to stiff Americans.

 

[Vastator]

Donald Trump’s election triumph is among the more astonishing in history.

Yet if he wishes to become the father of a new “America First”majority party, he must make good on his solemn promise:

To end the trade deficits that have bled our country of scores of thousands of factories, and to create millions of manufacturing jobs in the USA.

Fail here, and those slim majorities in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin disappear.

The president-elect takes credit for jawboning William Clay Ford to keep his Lincoln plant in Louisville. He is now jawboning Carrier air conditioning to stay in Indiana and not move to Mexico.

Good for him. But these are baby steps toward ending the $800 billion trade deficits in goods America runs annually, or bringing back factories and creating millions of new manufacturing jobs in the USA.

The NAFTA Republicans tell us the plants and jobs are never coming back, that we live in a globalized world, that production will now be done where it can be done cheapest–in Mexico, China, Asia.

Yet, on Nov. 8, Americans rejected this defeatism rooted in the tracts of 19th-century British scribblers and the ideology of 20th-century globalists like Woodrow Wilson and FDR.

America responded to Trump’s call for a new nationalism rooted in the economic principles and patriotism of Hamilton and the men of Mount Rushmore: Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt.

The president-elect has declared the TPP dead, and says he and his negotiators will walk away rather than accept another NAFTA.

Again, good, but again, not good enough, not nearly.

The New International Economic Order imposed upon us for decades has to be overthrown.

For the root cause of the trade deficits bleeding us lies in U.S. tax laws and trade policies that punish companies that stay in America and reward companies that move production overseas.

Executives move plants to Mexico, Asia and China for the same reason U.S. industrialists moved plants from the Frost Belt to the Sun Belt. Given the lower wages and lighter regulations, they can produce more cheaply there.

In dealing with advanced economies like Japan, Germany, and the EU, another critical factor is at work against us.

Since the Kennedy Round of trade negotiations, 50 years ago, international trade deals have reduced tariffs to insignificance.

But our trade rivals have replaced the tariffs with value-added taxes on imports from the USA. Even to belong to the EU, a country must have a VAT of at least 15 percent.

As Kevin Kearns of the U.S. Business and Industry Council writes, Europeans have replaced tariffs on U.S. goods with a VAT on U.S. goods, while rebating the VAT on Europe’s exports to us.

Some 160 countries impose VAT taxes. Along with currency manipulation, this is how European and Asian protectionists stick it to the Americans, whose armed forces have defended them for 60 years.

We lose at trade negotiations, even before we sit down at the table, because our adversaries declare their VAT nonnegotiable. And we accept it.

Trump has to persuade Congress to deal him and our trade negotiators our own high cards, without our having to go to the WTO and asking, “Mother, may I?”

Like this writer, Kearns argues for an 18 percent VAT on all goods and services entering the United States. All tax revenue raised by the VAT–hundreds of billions–should be used to reduce U.S. taxes, beginning by ending the income tax on small business and reducing to the lowest rate in the advanced world the U.S. corporate income tax.

The price of foreign-made goods in U.S. stores would rise, giving a competitive advantage to goods made in America. And with a border VAT of 18 percent, every U.S. corporate executive would have to consider the higher cost of leaving the United States to produce abroad.

Every foreign manufacturer, to maintain free access to the U.S. market of $17 trillion, greatest on earth, would have to consider shifting production–factories, technology, jobs–to the USA.

The incentive to produce abroad would diminish and disappear. The incentive to produce here would grow correspondingly.

Inversions–U.S. companies seeking lower tax rates by moving to places like Ireland–would end. Foreign companies and banks would be clamoring to get into the United States.

With a zero corporate tax, minority businesses would spring up. Existing businesses would have more cash to hire. America would shove China aside as the Enterprise Zone of the world.

Most important, by having Americans buy more from each other, and rely more on each other for the necessities of life, U.S. trade and tax policies would work to create a greater interdependence among us, rather than pull us apart as they do today.

Why not write new tax and trade laws that bring us together, recreating the one nation and people we once were–and can be again?

Pat Buchanan

Oh dear. A trading nation should be looking to remove tariffs not raising them.
What this will do is very simple.
1. Cause reciprocal tariffs to be imposed which will kill American exports and lead to more unemployment.
2. Create price rises and inflation which will harm the poor.

They already impose an ad hoc tariff, through VAT. Did you even read the article? The article suggests we do the same. Then, it's reciprocal,...

 

[Tommy Tainant]

Donald Trump’s election triumph is among the more astonishing in history.

Yet if he wishes to become the father of a new “America First”majority party, he must make good on his solemn promise:

To end the trade deficits that have bled our country of scores of thousands of factories, and to create millions of manufacturing jobs in the USA.

Fail here, and those slim majorities in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin disappear.

The president-elect takes credit for jawboning William Clay Ford to keep his Lincoln plant in Louisville. He is now jawboning Carrier air conditioning to stay in Indiana and not move to Mexico.

Good for him. But these are baby steps toward ending the $800 billion trade deficits in goods America runs annually, or bringing back factories and creating millions of new manufacturing jobs in the USA.

The NAFTA Republicans tell us the plants and jobs are never coming back, that we live in a globalized world, that production will now be done where it can be done cheapest–in Mexico, China, Asia.

Yet, on Nov. 8, Americans rejected this defeatism rooted in the tracts of 19th-century British scribblers and the ideology of 20th-century globalists like Woodrow Wilson and FDR.

America responded to Trump’s call for a new nationalism rooted in the economic principles and patriotism of Hamilton and the men of Mount Rushmore: Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt.

The president-elect has declared the TPP dead, and says he and his negotiators will walk away rather than accept another NAFTA.

Again, good, but again, not good enough, not nearly.

The New International Economic Order imposed upon us for decades has to be overthrown.

For the root cause of the trade deficits bleeding us lies in U.S. tax laws and trade policies that punish companies that stay in America and reward companies that move production overseas.

Executives move plants to Mexico, Asia and China for the same reason U.S. industrialists moved plants from the Frost Belt to the Sun Belt. Given the lower wages and lighter regulations, they can produce more cheaply there.

In dealing with advanced economies like Japan, Germany, and the EU, another critical factor is at work against us.

Since the Kennedy Round of trade negotiations, 50 years ago, international trade deals have reduced tariffs to insignificance.

But our trade rivals have replaced the tariffs with value-added taxes on imports from the USA. Even to belong to the EU, a country must have a VAT of at least 15 percent.

As Kevin Kearns of the U.S. Business and Industry Council writes, Europeans have replaced tariffs on U.S. goods with a VAT on U.S. goods, while rebating the VAT on Europe’s exports to us.

Some 160 countries impose VAT taxes. Along with currency manipulation, this is how European and Asian protectionists stick it to the Americans, whose armed forces have defended them for 60 years.

We lose at trade negotiations, even before we sit down at the table, because our adversaries declare their VAT nonnegotiable. And we accept it.

Trump has to persuade Congress to deal him and our trade negotiators our own high cards, without our having to go to the WTO and asking, “Mother, may I?”

Like this writer, Kearns argues for an 18 percent VAT on all goods and services entering the United States. All tax revenue raised by the VAT–hundreds of billions–should be used to reduce U.S. taxes, beginning by ending the income tax on small business and reducing to the lowest rate in the advanced world the U.S. corporate income tax.

The price of foreign-made goods in U.S. stores would rise, giving a competitive advantage to goods made in America. And with a border VAT of 18 percent, every U.S. corporate executive would have to consider the higher cost of leaving the United States to produce abroad.

Every foreign manufacturer, to maintain free access to the U.S. market of $17 trillion, greatest on earth, would have to consider shifting production–factories, technology, jobs–to the USA.

The incentive to produce abroad would diminish and disappear. The incentive to produce here would grow correspondingly.

Inversions–U.S. companies seeking lower tax rates by moving to places like Ireland–would end. Foreign companies and banks would be clamoring to get into the United States.

With a zero corporate tax, minority businesses would spring up. Existing businesses would have more cash to hire. America would shove China aside as the Enterprise Zone of the world.

Most important, by having Americans buy more from each other, and rely more on each other for the necessities of life, U.S. trade and tax policies would work to create a greater interdependence among us, rather than pull us apart as they do today.

Why not write new tax and trade laws that bring us together, recreating the one nation and people we once were–and can be again?

Pat Buchanan

Oh dear. A trading nation should be looking to remove tariffs not raising them.
What this will do is very simple.
1. Cause reciprocal tariffs to be imposed which will kill American exports and lead to more unemployment.
2. Create price rises and inflation which will harm the poor.

They already impose an ad hoc tariff, through VAT. Did you even read the article? The article suggests we do the same. Then, it's reciprocal,...

VAT is a sales tax that is applied to all goods sold,imported and domestic. It neither penalises imports nor helps domestic goods.
If it was just applied to imported goods it would be unfair. But it isnt, it is applied to all goods sold.

 

[yiostheoy]

Donald Trump’s election triumph is among the more astonishing in history.

Yet if he wishes to become the father of a new “America First”majority party, he must make good on his solemn promise:

To end the trade deficits that have bled our country of scores of thousands of factories, and to create millions of manufacturing jobs in the USA.

Fail here, and those slim majorities in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin disappear.

The president-elect takes credit for jawboning William Clay Ford to keep his Lincoln plant in Louisville. He is now jawboning Carrier air conditioning to stay in Indiana and not move to Mexico.

Good for him. But these are baby steps toward ending the $800 billion trade deficits in goods America runs annually, or bringing back factories and creating millions of new manufacturing jobs in the USA.

The NAFTA Republicans tell us the plants and jobs are never coming back, that we live in a globalized world, that production will now be done where it can be done cheapest–in Mexico, China, Asia.

Yet, on Nov. 8, Americans rejected this defeatism rooted in the tracts of 19th-century British scribblers and the ideology of 20th-century globalists like Woodrow Wilson and FDR.

America responded to Trump’s call for a new nationalism rooted in the economic principles and patriotism of Hamilton and the men of Mount Rushmore: Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt.

The president-elect has declared the TPP dead, and says he and his negotiators will walk away rather than accept another NAFTA.

Again, good, but again, not good enough, not nearly.

The New International Economic Order imposed upon us for decades has to be overthrown.

For the root cause of the trade deficits bleeding us lies in U.S. tax laws and trade policies that punish companies that stay in America and reward companies that move production overseas.

Executives move plants to Mexico, Asia and China for the same reason U.S. industrialists moved plants from the Frost Belt to the Sun Belt. Given the lower wages and lighter regulations, they can produce more cheaply there.

In dealing with advanced economies like Japan, Germany, and the EU, another critical factor is at work against us.

Since the Kennedy Round of trade negotiations, 50 years ago, international trade deals have reduced tariffs to insignificance.

But our trade rivals have replaced the tariffs with value-added taxes on imports from the USA. Even to belong to the EU, a country must have a VAT of at least 15 percent.

As Kevin Kearns of the U.S. Business and Industry Council writes, Europeans have replaced tariffs on U.S. goods with a VAT on U.S. goods, while rebating the VAT on Europe’s exports to us.

Some 160 countries impose VAT taxes. Along with currency manipulation, this is how European and Asian protectionists stick it to the Americans, whose armed forces have defended them for 60 years.

We lose at trade negotiations, even before we sit down at the table, because our adversaries declare their VAT nonnegotiable. And we accept it.

Trump has to persuade Congress to deal him and our trade negotiators our own high cards, without our having to go to the WTO and asking, “Mother, may I?”

Like this writer, Kearns argues for an 18 percent VAT on all goods and services entering the United States. All tax revenue raised by the VAT–hundreds of billions–should be used to reduce U.S. taxes, beginning by ending the income tax on small business and reducing to the lowest rate in the advanced world the U.S. corporate income tax.

The price of foreign-made goods in U.S. stores would rise, giving a competitive advantage to goods made in America. And with a border VAT of 18 percent, every U.S. corporate executive would have to consider the higher cost of leaving the United States to produce abroad.

Every foreign manufacturer, to maintain free access to the U.S. market of $17 trillion, greatest on earth, would have to consider shifting production–factories, technology, jobs–to the USA.

The incentive to produce abroad would diminish and disappear. The incentive to produce here would grow correspondingly.

Inversions–U.S. companies seeking lower tax rates by moving to places like Ireland–would end. Foreign companies and banks would be clamoring to get into the United States.

With a zero corporate tax, minority businesses would spring up. Existing businesses would have more cash to hire. America would shove China aside as the Enterprise Zone of the world.

Most important, by having Americans buy more from each other, and rely more on each other for the necessities of life, U.S. trade and tax policies would work to create a greater interdependence among us, rather than pull us apart as they do today.

Why not write new tax and trade laws that bring us together, recreating the one nation and people we once were–and can be again?

Pat Buchanan

Why are you quoting this moron ???

 

[yiostheoy]

Donald Trump’s election triumph is among the more astonishing in history.

Yet if he wishes to become the father of a new “America First”majority party, he must make good on his solemn promise:

To end the trade deficits that have bled our country of scores of thousands of factories, and to create millions of manufacturing jobs in the USA.

Fail here, and those slim majorities in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin disappear.

The president-elect takes credit for jawboning William Clay Ford to keep his Lincoln plant in Louisville. He is now jawboning Carrier air conditioning to stay in Indiana and not move to Mexico.

Good for him. But these are baby steps toward ending the $800 billion trade deficits in goods America runs annually, or bringing back factories and creating millions of new manufacturing jobs in the USA.

The NAFTA Republicans tell us the plants and jobs are never coming back, that we live in a globalized world, that production will now be done where it can be done cheapest–in Mexico, China, Asia.

Yet, on Nov. 8, Americans rejected this defeatism rooted in the tracts of 19th-century British scribblers and the ideology of 20th-century globalists like Woodrow Wilson and FDR.

America responded to Trump’s call for a new nationalism rooted in the economic principles and patriotism of Hamilton and the men of Mount Rushmore: Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt.

The president-elect has declared the TPP dead, and says he and his negotiators will walk away rather than accept another NAFTA.

Again, good, but again, not good enough, not nearly.

The New International Economic Order imposed upon us for decades has to be overthrown.

For the root cause of the trade deficits bleeding us lies in U.S. tax laws and trade policies that punish companies that stay in America and reward companies that move production overseas.

Executives move plants to Mexico, Asia and China for the same reason U.S. industrialists moved plants from the Frost Belt to the Sun Belt. Given the lower wages and lighter regulations, they can produce more cheaply there.

In dealing with advanced economies like Japan, Germany, and the EU, another critical factor is at work against us.

Since the Kennedy Round of trade negotiations, 50 years ago, international trade deals have reduced tariffs to insignificance.

But our trade rivals have replaced the tariffs with value-added taxes on imports from the USA. Even to belong to the EU, a country must have a VAT of at least 15 percent.

As Kevin Kearns of the U.S. Business and Industry Council writes, Europeans have replaced tariffs on U.S. goods with a VAT on U.S. goods, while rebating the VAT on Europe’s exports to us.

Some 160 countries impose VAT taxes. Along with currency manipulation, this is how European and Asian protectionists stick it to the Americans, whose armed forces have defended them for 60 years.

We lose at trade negotiations, even before we sit down at the table, because our adversaries declare their VAT nonnegotiable. And we accept it.

Trump has to persuade Congress to deal him and our trade negotiators our own high cards, without our having to go to the WTO and asking, “Mother, may I?”

Like this writer, Kearns argues for an 18 percent VAT on all goods and services entering the United States. All tax revenue raised by the VAT–hundreds of billions–should be used to reduce U.S. taxes, beginning by ending the income tax on small business and reducing to the lowest rate in the advanced world the U.S. corporate income tax.

The price of foreign-made goods in U.S. stores would rise, giving a competitive advantage to goods made in America. And with a border VAT of 18 percent, every U.S. corporate executive would have to consider the higher cost of leaving the United States to produce abroad.

Every foreign manufacturer, to maintain free access to the U.S. market of $17 trillion, greatest on earth, would have to consider shifting production–factories, technology, jobs–to the USA.

The incentive to produce abroad would diminish and disappear. The incentive to produce here would grow correspondingly.

Inversions–U.S. companies seeking lower tax rates by moving to places like Ireland–would end. Foreign companies and banks would be clamoring to get into the United States.

With a zero corporate tax, minority businesses would spring up. Existing businesses would have more cash to hire. America would shove China aside as the Enterprise Zone of the world.

Most important, by having Americans buy more from each other, and rely more on each other for the necessities of life, U.S. trade and tax policies would work to create a greater interdependence among us, rather than pull us apart as they do today.

Why not write new tax and trade laws that bring us together, recreating the one nation and people we once were–and can be again?

Pat Buchanan

Spam bot.

Ignore list.

 

[cnelsen]

Donald Trump’s election triumph is among the more astonishing in history.

Yet if he wishes to become the father of a new “America First”majority party, he must make good on his solemn promise:

To end the trade deficits that have bled our country of scores of thousands of factories, and to create millions of manufacturing jobs in the USA.

Fail here, and those slim majorities in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin disappear.

The president-elect takes credit for jawboning William Clay Ford to keep his Lincoln plant in Louisville. He is now jawboning Carrier air conditioning to stay in Indiana and not move to Mexico.

Good for him. But these are baby steps toward ending the $800 billion trade deficits in goods America runs annually, or bringing back factories and creating millions of new manufacturing jobs in the USA.

The NAFTA Republicans tell us the plants and jobs are never coming back, that we live in a globalized world, that production will now be done where it can be done cheapest–in Mexico, China, Asia.

Yet, on Nov. 8, Americans rejected this defeatism rooted in the tracts of 19th-century British scribblers and the ideology of 20th-century globalists like Woodrow Wilson and FDR.

America responded to Trump’s call for a new nationalism rooted in the economic principles and patriotism of Hamilton and the men of Mount Rushmore: Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt.

The president-elect has declared the TPP dead, and says he and his negotiators will walk away rather than accept another NAFTA.

Again, good, but again, not good enough, not nearly.

The New International Economic Order imposed upon us for decades has to be overthrown.

For the root cause of the trade deficits bleeding us lies in U.S. tax laws and trade policies that punish companies that stay in America and reward companies that move production overseas.

Executives move plants to Mexico, Asia and China for the same reason U.S. industrialists moved plants from the Frost Belt to the Sun Belt. Given the lower wages and lighter regulations, they can produce more cheaply there.

In dealing with advanced economies like Japan, Germany, and the EU, another critical factor is at work against us.

Since the Kennedy Round of trade negotiations, 50 years ago, international trade deals have reduced tariffs to insignificance.

But our trade rivals have replaced the tariffs with value-added taxes on imports from the USA. Even to belong to the EU, a country must have a VAT of at least 15 percent.

As Kevin Kearns of the U.S. Business and Industry Council writes, Europeans have replaced tariffs on U.S. goods with a VAT on U.S. goods, while rebating the VAT on Europe’s exports to us.

Some 160 countries impose VAT taxes. Along with currency manipulation, this is how European and Asian protectionists stick it to the Americans, whose armed forces have defended them for 60 years.

We lose at trade negotiations, even before we sit down at the table, because our adversaries declare their VAT nonnegotiable. And we accept it.

Trump has to persuade Congress to deal him and our trade negotiators our own high cards, without our having to go to the WTO and asking, “Mother, may I?”

Like this writer, Kearns argues for an 18 percent VAT on all goods and services entering the United States. All tax revenue raised by the VAT–hundreds of billions–should be used to reduce U.S. taxes, beginning by ending the income tax on small business and reducing to the lowest rate in the advanced world the U.S. corporate income tax.

The price of foreign-made goods in U.S. stores would rise, giving a competitive advantage to goods made in America. And with a border VAT of 18 percent, every U.S. corporate executive would have to consider the higher cost of leaving the United States to produce abroad.

Every foreign manufacturer, to maintain free access to the U.S. market of $17 trillion, greatest on earth, would have to consider shifting production–factories, technology, jobs–to the USA.

The incentive to produce abroad would diminish and disappear. The incentive to produce here would grow correspondingly.

Inversions–U.S. companies seeking lower tax rates by moving to places like Ireland–would end. Foreign companies and banks would be clamoring to get into the United States.

With a zero corporate tax, minority businesses would spring up. Existing businesses would have more cash to hire. America would shove China aside as the Enterprise Zone of the world.

Most important, by having Americans buy more from each other, and rely more on each other for the necessities of life, U.S. trade and tax policies would work to create a greater interdependence among us, rather than pull us apart as they do today.

Why not write new tax and trade laws that bring us together, recreating the one nation and people we once were–and can be again?

Pat Buchanan

Oh dear. A trading nation should be looking to remove tariffs not raising them.
What this will do is very simple.
1. Cause reciprocal tariffs to be imposed which will kill American exports and lead to more unemployment.
2. Create price rises and inflation which will harm the poor.

They already impose an ad hoc tariff, through VAT. Did you even read the article? The article suggests we do the same. Then, it's reciprocal,...

VAT is a sales tax that is applied to all goods sold,imported and domestic. It neither penalises imports nor helps domestic goods.
If it was just applied to imported goods it would be unfair. But it isnt, it is applied to all goods sold.

But US exporters have to pay it twice, on the sale in the EU and a transportation VAT equal to the full VAT itself. Not only that, but the EU then gives refunds to European exporters equal to the VAT on goods they sell in the United States. The VAT in Europe is nearly twenty percent. That's a lot and puts American businesses at a severe disadvantage. Asia has its own methods.

In any case, we ARE getting slaughtered. Something needs to be done. We can't just keep harping that free trade makes everyone rich. It's not working for us. We have to be pragmatic enough to not let our most cherished beliefs get in the way of sound policy.

 

[Tommy Tainant]

Hi,
Do you have a source for this ? I dont doubt what you are saying but I cant find any reference to it.
VAT is a sales tax so it is paid by the purchaser not the supplier.
VAT registered businesses can reclaim any balance in VAT paid over the course of the year.

I believe the threshold is very low for this and many American firms have EU based subsidiaries to do this.

It means that firms can claim back VAT on goods and services that they have bought during the course of doing business. Everything from transportation costs to toilet rolls.

This document is almost written in English and is advice for American exporters. I nearly lost the will to live reading it.

http://2016.export.gov/europeanunio.../@eg_eu/documents/webcontent/eg_eu_089244.pdf

American manufacturing faces the same problem that European manufacturers do. There is some poor bastard somewhere that will do the work for less. The answer to that ultimately is more equality.

As a youngster I worked in many of the local factories that were American owned. Monsanto,Firestone,Owens Corning,Air Products, Kelloggs. Apart from the latter they all moved production to warmer climes and left British workers,including many family members, high and dry.

My brother worked for Owens Corning for about 20 years and was actually training staff from India who were going to do his job for less than half the money he was getting. Apparently the Ganges flooded the new site and the whole project was put back a year.

The process has been going on since the 70s and was accelerated by Thatcherism. IE greed and self interest.

 

[beagle9]

Hi,
Do you have a source for this ? I dont doubt what you are saying but I cant find any reference to it.
VAT is a sales tax so it is paid by the purchaser not the supplier.
VAT registered businesses can reclaim any balance in VAT paid over the course of the year.

I believe the threshold is very low for this and many American firms have EU based subsidiaries to do this.

It means that firms can claim back VAT on goods and services that they have bought during the course of doing business. Everything from transportation costs to toilet rolls.

This document is almost written in English and is advice for American exporters. I nearly lost the will to live reading it.

http://2016.export.gov/europeanunio.../@eg_eu/documents/webcontent/eg_eu_089244.pdf

American manufacturing faces the same problem that European manufacturers do. There is some poor bastard somewhere that will do the work for less. The answer to that ultimately is more equality.

As a youngster I worked in many of the local factories that were American owned. Monsanto,Firestone,Owens Corning,Air Products, Kelloggs. Apart from the latter they all moved production to warmer climes and left British workers,including many family members, high and dry.

My brother worked for Owens Corning for about 20 years and was actually training staff from India who were going to do his job for less than half the money he was getting. Apparently the Ganges flooded the new site and the whole project was put back a year.

The process has been going on since the 70s and was accelerated by Thatcherism. IE greed and self interest.

. It is why we should get wise, and begin to rebuild America, and deal with this mess at the same time... Enough of American workers and families being last in the scheme of things, and worse America falling from grace, and getting murdered left and right because of the loss of respect and jobs in this country. There is no going back now, and corporations are just going to have to realize this fact. America First in the Americans eyes again, and we aren't going back to the screw job that our politicians and the world was giving to us.

 

[Tommy Tainant]

Hi,
Do you have a source for this ? I dont doubt what you are saying but I cant find any reference to it.
VAT is a sales tax so it is paid by the purchaser not the supplier.
VAT registered businesses can reclaim any balance in VAT paid over the course of the year.

I believe the threshold is very low for this and many American firms have EU based subsidiaries to do this.

It means that firms can claim back VAT on goods and services that they have bought during the course of doing business. Everything from transportation costs to toilet rolls.

This document is almost written in English and is advice for American exporters. I nearly lost the will to live reading it.

http://2016.export.gov/europeanunio.../@eg_eu/documents/webcontent/eg_eu_089244.pdf

American manufacturing faces the same problem that European manufacturers do. There is some poor bastard somewhere that will do the work for less. The answer to that ultimately is more equality.

As a youngster I worked in many of the local factories that were American owned. Monsanto,Firestone,Owens Corning,Air Products, Kelloggs. Apart from the latter they all moved production to warmer climes and left British workers,including many family members, high and dry.

My brother worked for Owens Corning for about 20 years and was actually training staff from India who were going to do his job for less than half the money he was getting. Apparently the Ganges flooded the new site and the whole project was put back a year.

The process has been going on since the 70s and was accelerated by Thatcherism. IE greed and self interest.

. It is why we should get wise, and begin to rebuild America, and deal with this mess at the same time... Enough of American workers and families being last in the scheme of things, and worse America falling from grace, and getting murdered left and right because of the loss of respect and jobs in this country. There is no going back now, and corporations are just going to have to realize this fact. America First in the Americans eyes again, and we aren't going back to the screw job that our politicians and the world was giving to us.

But Americans are the problem. They like low cost goods assembled by low paid foreigners. If they stopped buying these goods and bought American made goods there would not be an issue. It is exactly the same issue in the UK.
Our farmers have to sell their milk at below cost because the supermarkets have deemed it a loss leader.
And the consumer loves cheap milk which is now a part of our lifestyle.
The corporations have it and the question is how can we get it back.

 

[miketx]

Ha! The liberal theme = "We can't".

 

[cnelsen]

Hi,
Do you have a source for this ? I dont doubt what you are saying but I cant find any reference to it.
VAT is a sales tax so it is paid by the purchaser not the supplier.
VAT registered businesses can reclaim any balance in VAT paid over the course of the year.

I believe the threshold is very low for this and many American firms have EU based subsidiaries to do this.

It means that firms can claim back VAT on goods and services that they have bought during the course of doing business. Everything from transportation costs to toilet rolls.

This document is almost written in English and is advice for American exporters. I nearly lost the will to live reading it.

http://2016.export.gov/europeanunio.../@eg_eu/documents/webcontent/eg_eu_089244.pdf

American manufacturing faces the same problem that European manufacturers do. There is some poor bastard somewhere that will do the work for less. The answer to that ultimately is more equality.

As a youngster I worked in many of the local factories that were American owned. Monsanto,Firestone,Owens Corning,Air Products, Kelloggs. Apart from the latter they all moved production to warmer climes and left British workers,including many family members, high and dry.

My brother worked for Owens Corning for about 20 years and was actually training staff from India who were going to do his job for less than half the money he was getting. Apparently the Ganges flooded the new site and the whole project was put back a year.

The process has been going on since the 70s and was accelerated by Thatcherism. IE greed and self interest.

As I understand it, the "value added" part is at every step of the manufacturing process. It sounds insanely onerous just in bookkeeping terms. I forgot where I read the bit about the double whammy US (or Chinese?) firms take on the transportation tax, but what I gathered was that, yes, the consumer VAT is paid by both the US and EU firms equally, but the US firm gets hit on the "value added" transportation to Europe, 19 percent of a significant cost and something EU firms don't face exporting in this direction.

On the refund aspect, like you, I started to try to understand it, but decided I'd rather slam my hand in a car door. So I took their word for it, but it's another 19 percent. So, if true, that's a 38 percent tariff in disguise.

In any case, the EU isn't the real problem. Our societies are similar enough that we can engage in more-or-less free trade a la 19th Century scribblers. China, Mexico, and other perpetually "emerging" economies are where we Westerners are being taken to the cleaners and hung out by our faith in the free market. An American or European worker can not compete head-to-head with a Chinese or Indian or Mexican worker for the simple reason it costs way more to be an American or European than to be a Chinese or Mexican.

Our society is more expensive to maintain, but with societies, like most things, you get what you pay for. We've got something really nice here (or used to), which is why so many Chinese and Mexicans and Indians come here "for a better (more expensive) life". Bonanza for them if they can come here and enjoy our expensive society and , on top of it, instead of chipping in and carrying their weight, add to the cost by getting us to pay them to be here through generous public assistance benefits.

In our country, both parties are equally to blame. On globalism, there has been no difference until now, hopefully, with Trump. We shall see, but without the 35 percent tariff Trump proposed on the campaign trail, I don't see how he could bring the devastation to a halt.

 

[Supposn]

C Nelsen and Tommy Tainant, I share Trump’s dissatisfaction with USA’s chronic annual trade deficits detriment to our economy. It’s particularly detrimental to our numbers of jobs and their wages’ aggregate purchasing powers. I do not share his contention that the trade deficits are due to USA’s negotiating failures or to superior foreign negotiators.

Trump boasts he’s the ideal person to direct USA’s international negotiations that will remedy our annual trade deficits. If Trump attempts to do so, he’ll fail because negotiations with foreign governments or any corporations will not remedy our trade deficits.

Comparatively few people have any knowledge regarding the proposal for the unilateral Import Certificate policy proposal applied to USA’s global trade. It would entirely or almost entirely eliminate our annual trade deficits, boost our annual GDP’s and numbers of jobs more than otherwise while serving as an indirect but effective subsidy of USA’s exported goods.

Refer to Wikipedia’s article entitled “Import Certificates”
And to the thread
USA’s chronic trade deficits

Respectfully, Supposn

 

[Supposn]

VAT is a sales tax that is applied to all goods sold,imported and domestic. It neither penalises imports nor helps domestic goods.
If it was just applied to imported goods it would be unfair. But it isnt, it is applied to all goods sold.

C Nelsen, please cease claiming that a “value added tax”, (i.e. a VAT) is a tariff, Tommy Tainant is correct. Vat’s a superior administrative method of enacting a sales tax. I regret that the USA Congress demonstrates less common sense than many other nations we deal with.

[I advocate flat tax rate reductions of USA federal taxes based upon net or gross incomes such as FICA and income taxes. The reduced revenue should be replaced with a federal VAT. This would entail some provisions within and beyond our tax systems to relieve the additional costs to those with little or no incomes (that now pay little or no income taxes].

Foreign goods unloaded at their USA ports of entry carry no USA federal taxes imbedded within them. They are at advantage to USA goods entering our domestic markets.

The prices of USA goods leaving their USA producers shipping platforms and entering USA’s domestic markets have thus far accumulated federal income, FICA, and all other such taxes that have thus far been incurred due to the creation of those of those USA goods. This is in addition to their price disadvantages due to foreign labors’ often extremely lesser purchasing powers.

Before USA good leave the receiving docks and are permitted to enter those foreign nations’ domestic markets, those foreign nation’s collect the full share of tax revenue contributions appropriate for the imported goods. The full share of taxes appropriate to those USA goods contribute to those foreign nations’ tax revenues and USA goods are denied any advantage over those foreign nations’ producers.

Respectfully, Supposn

 

[cnelsen]

Hi,
Do you have a source for this ? I dont doubt what you are saying but I cant find any reference to it.
VAT is a sales tax so it is paid by the purchaser not the supplier.
VAT registered businesses can reclaim any balance in VAT paid over the course of the year.

I believe the threshold is very low for this and many American firms have EU based subsidiaries to do this.

It means that firms can claim back VAT on goods and services that they have bought during the course of doing business. Everything from transportation costs to toilet rolls.

This document is almost written in English and is advice for American exporters. I nearly lost the will to live reading it.

http://2016.export.gov/europeanunio.../@eg_eu/documents/webcontent/eg_eu_089244.pdf

American manufacturing faces the same problem that European manufacturers do. There is some poor bastard somewhere that will do the work for less. The answer to that ultimately is more equality.

As a youngster I worked in many of the local factories that were American owned. Monsanto,Firestone,Owens Corning,Air Products, Kelloggs. Apart from the latter they all moved production to warmer climes and left British workers,including many family members, high and dry.

My brother worked for Owens Corning for about 20 years and was actually training staff from India who were going to do his job for less than half the money he was getting. Apparently the Ganges flooded the new site and the whole project was put back a year.

The process has been going on since the 70s and was accelerated by Thatcherism. IE greed and self interest.

. It is why we should get wise, and begin to rebuild America, and deal with this mess at the same time... Enough of American workers and families being last in the scheme of things, and worse America falling from grace, and getting murdered left and right because of the loss of respect and jobs in this country. There is no going back now, and corporations are just going to have to realize this fact. America First in the Americans eyes again, and we aren't going back to the screw job that our politicians and the world was giving to us.

But Americans are the problem. They like low cost goods assembled by low paid foreigners. If they stopped buying these goods and bought American made goods there would not be an issue. It is exactly the same issue in the UK.
Our farmers have to sell their milk at below cost because the supermarkets have deemed it a loss leader.
And the consumer loves cheap milk which is now a part of our lifestyle.
The corporations have it and the question is how can we get it back.

That's why we need a tariff. This is one of those tragedy-of-the-commons issues. You can't always leave it to each consumer (and merchant) to exercise enlightened self-interest and opt for the more expensive product produced by his neighbor at $20 per hour and avoid the much cheaper product made by the worker in China who lives comfortably on $1 per hour.

 

[Supposn]

But US exporters have to pay it twice, on the sale in the EU and a transportation VAT equal to the full VAT itself. Not only that, but the EU then gives refunds to European exporters equal to the VAT on goods they sell in the United States. The VAT in Europe is nearly twenty percent. That's a lot and puts American businesses at a severe disadvantage. Asia has its own methods.

In any case, we ARE getting slaughtered. Something needs to be done. We can't just keep harping that free trade makes everyone rich. It's not working for us. We have to be pragmatic enough to not let our most cherished beliefs get in the way of sound policy.

C Nelson, you should find the thread
http://www.usmessageboard.com/threads/import-certificates-vs-tariffs.551136/
of some interest.

Regarding VAT, unlike other methods for administrating sales taxes, the value-added tax (i.e. VAT) that due at any link within a products chain of commercial transactions is the government’s entire sales tax revenue that’s attributable that product after that particular transaction within the product’s chain of transactions.

Usually governments waive their taxes upon products being shipped out of their jurisdictions thus their exports are more competitively priced. Good imported from VAT nations do not have a single penny of VAT taxes imbedded within their prices.
There’s now no method to even estimate the extent of taxes imbedded within the prices of USA exported products; those taxes are not waived and USA exported products are priced less competitively. This is among the attributes that account for the superiority of the VAT method.

Respectfully, Supposn

 

[Supposn]

As I understand it, the "value added" part is at every step of the manufacturing process. It sounds insanely onerous just in bookkeeping terms. I forgot where I read the bit about the double whammy US (or Chinese?) firms take on the transportation tax, but what I gathered was that, yes, the consumer VAT is paid by both the US and EU firms equally, but the US firm gets hit on the "value added" transportation to Europe, 19 percent of a significant cost and something EU firms don't face exporting in this direction.

On the refund aspect, like you, I started to try to understand it, but decided I'd rather slam my hand in a car door. So I took their word for it, but it's another 19 percent. So, if true, that's a 38 percent tariff in disguise.

In any case, the EU isn't the real problem. Our societies are similar enough that we can engage in more-or-less free trade a la 19th Century scribblers. China, Mexico, and other perpetually "emerging" economies are where we Westerners are being taken to the cleaners and hung out by our faith in the free market. An American or European worker can not compete head-to-head with a Chinese or Indian or Mexican worker for the simple reason it costs way more to be an American or European than to be a Chinese or Mexican.

Our society is more expensive to maintain, but with societies, like most things, you get what you pay for. We've got something really nice here (or used to), which is why so many Chinese and Mexicans and Indians come here "for a better (more expensive) life". Bonanza for them if they can come here and enjoy our expensive society and , on top of it, instead of chipping in and carrying their weight, add to the cost by getting us to pay them to be here through generous public assistance benefits.

In our country, both parties are equally to blame. On globalism, there has been no difference until now, hopefully, with Trump. We shall see, but without the 35 percent tariff Trump proposed on the campaign trail, I don't see how he could bring the devastation to a halt.

C Nelson, regarding value added tax, (i.e. VAT) refer to
http://www.usmessageboard.com/threads/value-added-tax-vat.551143/

Regarding the superiority of the Import Certificate policy, refer to
http://www.usmessageboard.com/threads/import-certificates-vs-tariffs.551136/

Respectfully, Supposn