Tariffs Are Used By Every President - Not Just Trump - To Help Our Country

Every American president has imposed tariffs on foreign trade goods - and almost every other nation does it too - to protect their own national interests.

Sometimes a tariff helps domestic businesses compete against foreign competition unfairly supported by foreign governments and their rules....  It is most effective and most needed (in my opinion) when a rival nation with little to no regulation on labor laws or pollution is able to make things extremely cheap compared to a domestic business burdened with paying fair wages, crippling paperwork and regulations, not polluting, etc.

Tariff money goes straight to the government (indirectly reducing the tax burden on everyone else) and also eliminates unfair competition (as described above.)  The problem is it sometimes also eliminates fair competition, when foreigners are just manufacturing better goods more cheaply.

Tariffs are not inherently good or bad.  Sometimes they are needed to safeguard domestic industries we must maintain.  For example it would strategically weaken the nation to allow the collapse of domestic farming, oil production, weapons development, and technological development.  Even if we are inefficient at it, we cannot let foreign rivals that might one day be military enemies dominate crucial industries.  On the other hand, sometimes foreign nations should be allowed to make awesome consumer goods and sell them here cheaper than our own if they are simply better manufacturers and capitalists.

As found at the bunkerville blog here: U.S. already imposes over 12,000 tariffs on imports

"The Truth. We already impose over 12,000 tariffs on imports. In a story that appeared in Business Insider back in October of 2010, during the reign of Obama and Clinton, we learned that as far as tariffs are concerned, we are already knee-deep in applying tariffs to our favorite swamp benefactor businesses. Surprised? So when Congress gets on its high horse and tells us that we will have a trade war, ask them about the imposed tariffs on American products that happen to have great lobbyists, and are surviving. “Free Trade?” To hear Never Trumpers (and a few Trumpkins) tell the story, Donald Trump is the first president since Hoover to impose a tariff on imported products. Obama’s economic adviser Austan Goolsbee told CNBC a tariff “destroys more jobs than it creates.” If so, then Obama was a prolific jobs destroyer. There was a 31% tariff on Chinese solar panels. There was a 35% tariff on Chinese tires. That last one destroyed 100,000 jobs. In China. “Obama’s decision may affect the employment of 100,000 tire workers in China and may bring an aggregated loss of $1 billion to China’s tire exporters,” Fan Rende, chairman of China Rubber Industry Association, said at the time. We give presidents the power to impose tariffs. They use it." And they help the United States in the continuous trade wars."