Let's ask our resident expert...lustylad, how much did the Trump tariffs costs consumers the last 3-4 years?

Inquiring minds are waiting with baited breath upon your expert analysis! Originally Posted by WTF

Why hasn't Biden removed the tariffs? Especially with the supply chain problems that are driving up inflation?

Learn how to fucking post a link, put anything from the link in quotemarks, and separate your own comments from those of others! Originally Posted by lustylad

Again lustylad...our resident economic expert. How much damage in Trumps regressive tariffs having on the economy. Are they adding to inflation?

Let's stick to the subject matter and forget about your 2nd job as school monitor.

Why hasn't Biden removed the tariffs? Especially with the supply chain problems that are driving up inflation? Originally Posted by Tiny

Why can't you answer the orginal question and I'll answer yours.

You and lustylad continually try and justify his tax cuts and conveniently gloss over his tariffs. Gloss over may be too generous....you completely ignore. Do not forget the Regressive nature of tariffs.

Why can't you answer the orginal question and I'll answer yours.

You and lustylad continually try and justify his tax cuts and conveniently gloss over his tariffs. Gloss over may be too generous....you completely ignore. Do not forget the Regressive nature of tariffs. Originally Posted by WTF

That's hilarious. I slammed the tariffs that Trump instituted until I was blue in the face. Probably 100+ posts. (Damn, I spend way too much time on this site.) Just do a search on username Tiny and tariffs.

Now why does Biden get a pass on this regressive taxation? Why aren't you asking how much they've cost the American consumer under his administration too? He could remove the tariffs with a stroke of his pen.

Biden blames the supply chain for inflation. But he refuses to do something about it by removing the tariffs, which would not only help in that regard but also lower prices of many imported goods. Meanwhile he poo poo's the idea that his American Rescue Plan juiced inflation. Larry Summers and Republican Congressmen were shouting from the tops of their lungs that that was a bad idea.

That's hilarious. I slammed the tariffs that Trump instituted until I was blue in the face. Probably 100+ posts. (Damn, I spend way too much time on this site.) Just do a search on username Tiny and tariffs.

Now why does Biden get a pass on this regressive taxation? Why aren't you asking how much they've cost the American consumer under his administration too? He could remove the tariffs with a stroke of his pen.

Biden blames the supply chain for inflation. But he refuses to do something about it by removing the tariffs, which would not only help in that regard but also lower prices of many imported goods. Meanwhile he poo poo's the idea that his American Rescue Plan juiced inflation. Larry Summers and Republican Congressmen were shouting from the tops of their lungs that that was a bad idea. Originally Posted by Tiny

This is nat a whataboutism thread but I will indulge you.

I'm not for regressive tariffs from any President.

I'm a free trade mostly free borders kinda guy!

Let people work where employers will hire them!

Maybe some lucky employer could get rid of dead weights like WackoKid and lustylad and replace them with a smart beautiful chica!

OK, you're partisan but kind of semi rational until you get to this post. This is where you lose me. It makes "0" sense to blame 9/11 on Bush or COVID on Trump. Now if you're arguing that Bush badly mishandled our response to 9/11, including the invasion of Iraq, I'll agree with you.

Trump encouraged people to get vaccinated. He got vaccinated at first opportunity, after enough time had passed after he was infected. But yes, he could have been more diligent in his encouragement. Originally Posted by Tiny

This is mainly in response to the more covid deaths under Biden than trump. If we are passing blame on anything, it starts at the root, the president where it started. Clinton probably wouldn't have discarded Obama's advice on pandemic response and probably would have cared more about the pandemic than getting reelected.

I think trump wanted a "small" pandemic that he could take care of in short order to help him get reelected. He miscalculated and it spread much faster than he thought. There was a critical month around Feb 2020 where he did nothing but say it is just a flu, it will go away by easter...

This is mainly in response to the more covid deaths under Biden than trump. If we are passing blame on anything, it starts at the root, the president where it started. Clinton probably wouldn't have discarded Obama's advice on pandemic response and probably would have cared more about the pandemic than getting reelected.

I think trump wanted a "small" pandemic that he could take care of in short order to help him get reelected. He miscalculated and it spread much faster than he thought. There was a critical month around Feb 2020 where he did nothing but say it is just a flu, it will go away by easter... Originally Posted by royamcr

you do know that Obama ignored both ebola and swine flu, yes? and during that same month in February Facui was publicly saying the same thing. Trump can't be wrong and Fauci right. (Fauci was actually wrong on everything included his advice to Trump).

This is mainly in response to the more covid deaths under Biden than trump. If we are passing blame on anything, it starts at the root, the president where it started. Clinton probably wouldn't have discarded Obama's advice on pandemic response and probably would have cared more about the pandemic than getting reelected.

I think trump wanted a "small" pandemic that he could take care of in short order to help him get reelected. He miscalculated and it spread much faster than he thought. There was a critical month around Feb 2020 where he did nothing but say it is just a flu, it will go away by easter... Originally Posted by royamcr

Bush was actually the one who did the most. Our preparedness and stockpiles of PPE and the like slipped under Obama and Trump.

I would have liked to see Biden do more to get test kits and KN95 or equivalent masks in the hands of Americans. Almost two years into the pandemic, we should have been better prepared for the Omicron wave. The cost of getting these in the hands of people would have been a drop in the bucket by the side of the $5 trillion+ of stimulus and relief spending.

As to Trump, my belief is somewhat different. He knew the pandemic, and the effect on the economy, would hurt him. He had a pretty good idea of what was coming, based on an interview back around February, 2020, I think with Bob Woodward. But he believes that if he tells something that's untrue enough, people will start to believe him. And to an extent he's right. Twenty-five percent of the population believe the 2020 election was stolen for example.

Anyway, one example was when he was complaining about too much testing. That's ridiculous of course. If people test and know they're positive, many will stay home and stay away from elderly people and the like. But I guess he figured if our case numbers were low it would reflect more favorably on his administration.

I don't think this is the best way to run a country, but there's probably a good counter argument. The economy and peoples spirits were going to hold up better if they didn't get overly paranoid and believe we were going to hell in a handbasket.

baaaaaaahahahahaa. you asked for it here is a start.


1. Trump promised to bring down America's trade deficit “as fast as possible.” Instead, the trade deficit has hit an all-time high. The United States is now purchasing more goods and services from the rest of the world than we sell abroad than at any time in history.

2. As a presidential candidate in 2016, he said he could completely eliminate the federal debt in eight years. Instead, the federal debt has exploded thanks to Trump and the GOP's $1.9 trillion tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. They're already using the growing debt to threaten cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

3. He promised to boost the wages of American workers, including a $4,000 pay raise for the average American family. Instead, wages for most Americans have been flat, adjusted for inflation. Meanwhile, over the same period, corporate profits have soared and the rich have become far richer, but the gains haven’t trickled down.

4. His administration said that corporations would invest their savings from tax cuts. Instead, corporations spent more money buying back shares of their own stock in 2018 than they invested in new equipment or facilities. These stock buybacks provide no real benefit for the economy, but boost executive bonuses and payouts for wealthy investors.

5. He promised a tax cut for middle-class families. Instead most Americans will end up paying more by 2027.

6. He promised to keep jobs in America and crack down on companies that ship jobs overseas. Instead, his tax law has created financial incentives for corporations to expand their operations abroad. Trump's trade wars have also encouraged companies like Harley Davidson to move production overseas.

7. He promised to “drain the swamp” of Washington lobbyists. Instead, he's put them in charge of health, safety, and environmental protections—which has endangered most Americans while increasing corporate profits even further. Originally Posted by royamcr

+1


Good post. Point #4 is spot on.

Bush was actually the one who did the most. Our preparedness and stockpiles of PPE and the like slipped under Obama and Trump.

I would have liked to see Biden do more to get test kits and KN95 or equivalent masks in the hands of Americans. Almost two years into the pandemic, we should have been better prepared for the Omicron wave. The cost of getting these in the hands of people would have been a drop in the bucket by the side of the $5 trillion+ of stimulus and relief spending.

As to Trump, my belief is somewhat different. He knew the pandemic, and the effect on the economy, would hurt him. He had a pretty good idea of what was coming, based on an interview back around February, 2020, I think with Bob Woodward. But he believes that if he tells something that's untrue enough, people will start to believe him. And to an extent he's right. Twenty-five percent of the population believe the 2020 election was stolen for example.

Anyway, one example was when he was complaining about too much testing. That's ridiculous of course. If people test and know they're positive, many will stay home and stay away from elderly people and the like. But I guess he figured if our case numbers were low it would reflect more favorably on his administration.

I don't think this is the best way to run a country, but there's probably a good counter argument. The economy and peoples spirits were going to hold up better if they didn't get overly paranoid and believe we were going to hell in a handbasket. Originally Posted by Tiny

ProPublica found that the budget battles during Obama’s tenure after the Republicans won the 2010 election hurt the stockpile’s budget.

In early 2011, Obama’s administration released a budget request for $655 million for the stockpile, an increase of $59 million including to acquire new products. But Congress ultimately allocated $534 million for the 2012 fiscal year, a 10% cut from the prior year, ProPublica found. And it went down to 477 million from there.

And if Trump would have taken it seriously and started lock downs and other efforts in Feb 2020 instead of April 2020 much of Covid could have been squashed "before easter" like he promised.

4. His administration said that corporations would invest their savings from tax cuts. Instead, corporations spent more money buying back shares of their own stock in 2018 than they invested in new equipment or facilities. These stock buybacks provide no real benefit for the economy, but boost executive bonuses and payouts for wealthy investors. Originally Posted by royamcr

+1


Good post. Point #4 is spot on. Originally Posted by adav8s28

Avav8s28 and Royamcr,

The 2017 TCJA not only cut the corporate tax rate, but it also encouraged corporations to bring back massive amounts of cash from overseas bank accounts. And that, not the tax cut, is the main reason there were exceptionally large buybacks in 2018. That's a good thing. When the companies bought back their shares, the money went into the hands of investors - pension funds, mutual funds, individual investors and the like. And most of that money was recycled into the American economy, instead of other countries'.

To give you an idea of what was going on, in 2018, when the TCJA took effect, U.S. firms repatriated $777 billion, roughly 78% of the estimated stock as of end-2017 of offshore cash holdings!!! The way our tax system worked prior to 2018, a corporation could avoid U.S. tax on earnings overseas perpetually as long as it never brought the money back. So many corporations just let the cash pile up.

The TCJA changed that by implementing the GILTI tax on foreign earnings of corporations. And it also encouraged them to bring back the cash they had overseas by cutting the tax rate on repatriations.

The $777 billion figure is from the federal reserve:

https://www.federalreserve.gov/econr...s-20190806.htm

The TOTAL revenues raised from the corporate income tax were $202 billion in 2018:

https://www.cbo.gov/publication/55345

The corporate income tax in 2018 ($202 billion) was small compared to repatriation of cash ($777 billion).

LustyLad and CaptainMidnight, our two economic gurus, have posted on this recently. If you'll read their posts carefully, you'll have a much better understanding of what was going on. Or at least I did anyway.

Captain Midnight's post in particular is enlightening. While many journalists, who don't have his background in economics, have argued the corporate tax cuts were regressive because they think rich people own corporations, CM points out it's the employees and consumers who benefitted most from the corporate tax cut, not the shareholders.

The 2017 Tax Reform Delivered as Promised
Our predictions about the law’s effects on business investment, wages and tax revenue were correct.

By Tyler Goodspeed and Kevin Hassett
May 8, 2022 5:24 pm ET

As Karl Popper demonstrated, evaluating a scientific proposition requires falsifiability—theories or hypotheses can’t be proved or disproved if they can’t be subjected to empirical tests. When the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was passed, we were criticized for being overly optimistic about the effects we predicted it would have. Now the evidence is in. Our critics were wrong, and the economic data have met or even exceeded our predictions.

In 2017, we predicted that reducing the federal corporate tax rate to 21% from 35% and introducing full expensing of new-equipment investment would boost productivity-enhancing business investment by 9%. Though growth in business investment had been slowing in the years leading up to 2017, after tax reform it surged. By the end of 2019 it was 9.4% above its pre-2017 trend, exactly in line with the prediction of our models. Looking solely at corporate businesses—those most directly affected by business-tax reform in 2017—real investment was up by as much as 14.2% over the pre-2017 trend, slightly more than we expected. Among S&P 500 companies, total capital expenditures in the two years after tax reform were 20% higher than in the two years prior, when capital expenditures actually declined.

Citing an extensive empirical literature, we also predicted that by enhancing worker bargaining power and increasing new investment in domestic plant and equipment, the average household would see real income gains of $4,000 over three to five years. In 2018 and 2019 real median household income in the U.S. rose by $5,000—a bigger increase in only two years than in the entire eight years of the preceding recovery combined. In 2019 alone, real median household income rose by $4,400, more than in the eight years from 2010 through 2017 combined.

Those extra wages contributed extra tax revenue as well. We predicted that despite a short-term drop in corporate income-tax revenue as companies expensed new-equipment investment, the combination of increased economic growth and reduced incentives to shift corporate profits overseas would result in a long-run net positive revenue effect. Before the reform, U.S. firms moved their profits overseas to avoid the highest tax of any advanced economy. After the reform, we predicted that more profits would be booked at home. For each dollar booked at home there would be a gain for the U.S. Treasury, since 21% of a positive number is much larger than 35% of zero.

Commentators have recently noticed that in the 2021 fiscal year, not only did federal corporate tax revenues come in at a record high, but corporate tax revenue as a share of the U.S. economy rose to its highest level since 2015. Actual corporate tax revenue in 2021 was $46 billion higher than the Congressional Budget Office’s post-reform forecast. Even though the U.S. economy was only slightly larger in 2021 than the CBO had projected, corporate tax revenue as a share of gross domestic product was 21% higher (1.7% versus 1.4%).

Some have attributed this good news to transitory effects related to the pandemic rather than 2017 tax reform. Yet in President Biden’s latest budget, the administration’s own baseline forecast for corporate tax revenue (i.e., before the revenue effects of its budget proposals) is now above the CBO’s pre-2017 forecast for every year from 2023 through 2027. This is true for both the level of corporate tax receipts and as a share of GDP. This optimistic forecast is consistent with our views about the long-run nature of the effects of tax reform and inconsistent with critics’ claim it has no effects.

Why are corporate tax receipts coming in not only at much higher levels, but also as a bigger share of the U.S. economy? The reason is exactly as we foreshadowed in the 2018 and 2019 Economic Reports of the President. By neutralizing the favorable tax treatment of selling intellectual-property services overseas via a foreign subsidiary, and by taxing past corporate earnings previously sheltered in those foreign subsidiaries, the 2017 tax law effectively created an incentive for multinational enterprises to move their profits home.

As a result, not only did domestic pretax earnings grow by a greater percentage than total pretax earnings between 2019 and 2021, they also grew by more for companies with greater foreign-derived income from intellectual property, meaning these firms were either repatriating intellectual property to the U.S. or locating less new intellectual property outside the U.S.

This is reflected in aggregate international transactions data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which shows that firms were repatriating only 36% of prior-year foreign earnings, and reinvesting 70% abroad, in the years leading up to 2017. Since 2019 they have on average repatriated 57%, and reinvested only 47% abroad. Overall since 2017, firms have repatriated $1.8 trillion in past overseas earnings.

In addition, the average annual dollar value of acquisitions by U.S. companies of foreign assets in 2018 and 2019 was 50% higher than in the two preceding years, while acquisitions of U.S. assets by foreign companies declined by 25%. Multinationals find the idea of domiciling in the U.S. and pursuing outbound acquisitions increasingly appealing. U.S. companies, on the other hand, are increasingly uninterested in being acquired by foreign multinationals and domiciling in lower-tax jurisdictions.

One of the exciting aspects of academic discovery is the opportunity to test theories and hypotheses against real-world data. In 2017, we put our hypotheses about the effects of corporate tax reform in the public record and have passed the test. The White House and Democrats in Congress should think twice about undoing the corporate tax reform and partisan economic pundits should point their criticisms at something else.

Mr. Goodspeed is a fellow at the Hoover Institution and served as acting chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, 2020-21. Mr. Hassett is a distinguished visiting fellow at Hoover and was chairman of the council, 2017-19.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-201...st-11652036657 Originally Posted by lustylad

Concerning your question as to my views on the corporate tax portion of the TCJA, here's my take, as I have written a little on the topic in past years:

Yes, new numbers do show that revenues from the corporate tax are sharply up over this past year. I don't know whether that will be sustainable in future years. Time will tell. But maximizing revenue is not even what I'm most concerned about here, as I think the corporate income tax is one of the worst forms of taxation and impedes the economy with more deadweight loss than almost any other tax.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadweight_loss

In my view, the most important feature of the corporate tax cut is that it ceased (or at least stopped strongly incentivizing) inversions where firms would shift activity to associated entities booking profits in lower-tax jurisdictions. As a result of the new legislation, as the WSJ piece and others have pointed out, a lot of capital was repatriated to within US shores.

Here's something else progressives forget (or do know, but disingenuously demagogue):

Although some of the incidence of the corporate income tax lands on capital (shareholders), much of it is actually borne by consumers and employees. The ratio of the relative burdens, of course, varies over time and across industries, and with the mobility of capital and labor -- as well as the elasticity of supply/demand for products and services. (Countless papers and theses have been written on this topic over the last couple of decades.)

Another disingenuous argument is that the rate didn't need to be lowered because the effective rate for most companies was much less than 35%. That completely ignores all the shifting and maneuvering many firms had to do to get their effective rate lower, much of which had adverse effects on the efficiency of their operations.

At the very least, the rate needed to be lowered to something more or less typical of most OECD nations, which it was.

That lowers the amount of deadweight loss imposed on the economy by an inefficient, poorly designed tax.

. Originally Posted by CaptainMidnight

ProPublica found that the budget battles during Obama’s tenure after the Republicans won the 2010 election hurt the stockpile’s budget.

In early 2011, Obama’s administration released a budget request for $655 million for the stockpile, an increase of $59 million including to acquire new products. But Congress ultimately allocated $534 million for the 2012 fiscal year, a 10% cut from the prior year, ProPublica found. And it went down to 477 million from there.

And if Trump would have taken it seriously and started lock downs and other efforts in Feb 2020 instead of April 2020 much of Covid could have been squashed "before easter" like he promised. Originally Posted by royamcr

Interesting info in your first two paragraphs. It's a pity we weren't better prepared. The amounts required would have been a pittance compared to what we spent on stimulus and relief. And lives would have been saved and hospitalizations prevented, by buying more time for the vaccines to be developed. Bill Gates was shouting from the rooftops that we needed to do this back in 2015.

I don't think it was possible to squash the virus. While I wish Trump had used the bully pulpit more to encourage people to wear good quality masks and social distance, I suspect his administration did a better job in encouraging development of the vaccines than a Hillary Clinton administration would have done. Overall, we did have more deaths per capita than other wealthy countries. But our economy suffered less.

Interesting info in your first two paragraphs. It's a pity we weren't better prepared. The amounts required would have been a pittance compared to what we spent on stimulus and relief. And lives would have been saved and hospitalizations prevented, by buying more time for the vaccines to be developed. Bill Gates was shouting from the rooftops that we needed to do this back in 2015.

I don't think it was possible to squash the virus. While I wish Trump had used the bully pulpit more to encourage people to wear good quality masks and social distance, I suspect his administration did a better job in encouraging development of the vaccines than a Hillary Clinton administration would have done. Overall, we did have more deaths per capita than other wealthy countries. But our economy suffered less. Originally Posted by Tiny

I think Clinton would have been on top of it and not worrying about how it would affect the upcoming election. Trump was desperate to get elected, thats why all the hub bub about losing. He knows he is in a world of shit and presidency for 4 more years would shield him from most of that. Some SOLs would run out in that time also.

Any president including trump would seek rapid vaccine and treatment information. Anyone other than trump wouldn't have branded it as Warp anything, it would have just happened. I am sure there were marketing meetings just to come up with a name for it.

I think we should put royamcr in charge of everything seems to know all the details that CNN has been spewing maybe should run for president and we can elect someone that will fix it all and not need a teleprompter to tie their shoes ROFL
Glad I stumbled across this thread I needed a good laugh

I think we should put royamcr in charge of everything seems to know all the details that CNN has been spewing maybe should run for president and we can elect someone that will fix it all and not need a teleprompter to tie their shoes ROFL
Glad I stumbled across this thread I needed a good laugh Originally Posted by Bighoo1

It doesn't matter who is "spewing" numbers. Refute the numbers not the source. What are your retarded alternate facts? Every fucking president uses a teleprompter you dumb fuck.