Tariffs, Corruption, and the Massive Hypocrisy of JD Vance
All the ugly is surfacing
I’m going to start with the nonsensical idea of imposing trade tariffs as an economic policy, Trump’s brilliant and utterly cynical idea. The way they work is a tariff is placed on a category of goods being imported from a foreign country, in this case, China.
An example would be the current 100% tariff on Chinese made electric vehicles, effectively doubling their cost for American consumers. This was done because China was flooding the market here with extremely low cost cars in a concerted effort to destroy US carmakers. They were willing to sell EVs at a huge loss to gain market share and dominance.
So, the tariff was imposed to protect US business interests, not as a source of income for the government. If you chose to buy a car with the tariff, you would pay the tariff, not the Chinese government or company. The tariff was designed to punish them by eliminating the artificial price advantage.
This is how tariffs are supposed to work. But in the Trump campaign’s weird economic logic, they act as though tariffs are a source of revenue, basically a tax on Chinese goods and that the money would flow to government coffers, offsetting the need for more taxes.
