Tariffs Quotes

• The income tax is a twentieth-century socialist experiment that has failed. Before the income tax was imposed on us just 80 years ago, government had no claim to our income. Only sales, excise, and tariff taxes were allowed.

  Alan Keyes

  Government, Years, Income

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• Tariffs that save jobs in the steel industry mean higher steel prices, which in turn means fewer sales of American steel products around the world and losses of far more jobs than are saved.

  Thomas Sowell

  Jobs, Mean, Loss

  Interview with John Hawkins, rightwingnews.com. February 8, 2012.

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• The benefits of a tariff are visible. Union workers can see they are "protected". The harm which a tariff does is invisible. It's spread widely. There are people that don't have jobs because of tariffs but they don't know it.

  Milton Friedman

  Jobs, People, Doe

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• As history has repeatedly proven, one trade tariff begets another, then another - until you've got a full-blown trade war. No one ever wins, and consumers always get screwed.

  Mark McKinnon

  War, Winning, Trade

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• What protectionism teaches us, is to do to ourselves in time of peace what enemies seek to do to us in time of war.

  Henry George

  War, Enemy, Teach

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• We shouldn't be putting tariffs on anything. That hurts working men and women in US. What we should be doing is making our manufacturing more competitive.

  Rick Santorum

  Hurt, Men, Should

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• Tariff policy beneficiaries are always visible, but its victims are mostly invisible. Politicians love this. The reason is simple: The beneficiaries know for whom to cast their ballots, and the victims don't know whom to blame for their calamity.

  Walter E. Williams

  Simple, Blame, Invisible

  Walter E. Williams (2013). “Liberty Versus the Tyranny of Socialism: Controversial Essays”, p.209, Hoover Press

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• I am a tariff man, standing on a tariff platform.

  William McKinley

  Men, Platforms, Standing

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

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• Protectionism is a misnomer. The only people protected by tariffs, quotas and trade restrictions are those engaged in uneconomic and wasteful activity. Free trade is the only philosophy compatible with international peace and prosperity.

  Walter Block

  Freedom, Philosophy, People

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• Any time you read that your government is erecting tariff barriers, supporting threatened industries with subsidies, or interfering in any way with free trade between individuals or nations, you must realize that your standard of living is being lowered as a result.

  John Pugsley

  Government, Subsidies, Way

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• I am in favor of a national bank...in favor of the internal improvements system and a high protective tariff.

  Abraham Lincoln

  War, Favors, Improvement

  "Obama's Challenge: What Would Lincoln Do?" by Cristina Corbin, www.foxnews.com. February 11, 2009.

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• U.S. corn exports to CAFTA countries will benefit from reduced tariffs and duty-free access for corn products.

  John Shimkus

  Country, Benefits, Corn

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• It's so hard to get our goods into China. And when we do get in they charge us a huge surtax. They call it a surtax or a tariff. I call it a tax.

  Donald Trump

  China, Taxes, Goods

  Source: www.economist.com

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• The primary reason for a tariff is that it enables the exploitation of the domestic consumer by a process indistinguishable from sheer robbery.

  Albert J. Nock

  Libertarian, Reason, Economics

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• TARIFF, n. A scale of taxes on imports, designed to protect the domestic producer against the greed of his consumer.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Greed, Scales, Producers

  Ambrose Bierce (2016). “The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World”, p.217, 谷月社

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• Tariffs protect ill-considered government policies, such as costly regulations and high taxes on labor and capital that make our goods uncompetitive in international markets.

  Paul Craig Roberts

  Government, Regulation, Taxes

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• Every businessman is in favor of freedom for everybody else, but when it comes to himself that's a different question. He's always the special case. He ought to get special privileges from the government, a tariff, this, that and the other thing.

  Milton Friedman

  Government, Special, Favors

  Milton Friedman (2017). “Milton Friedman on Freedom: Selections from The Collected Works of Milton Friedman”, p.71, Hoover Press

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• Many people who have lost out in the last few decades voted for Trump. Trump will have a difficult time turning them into winners. The jobs of these people are not at risk because of Chinese or Mexican workers, but because of robots and computers. And new trade barriers and higher tariffs are not going to change that.

  Nicholas Bloom

  Jobs, People, Mexican

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• Evidence points out that if you raise tariffs too much it will increase smuggling.

  P. Chidambaram

  Too Much, Increase, Evidence

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• In developing countries, lack of infrastructure is a far more serious barrier to trade than tariffs.

  Joseph Stiglitz

  Country, Developing Countries, Serious

  "In defence of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank" by Joseph Stiglitz, www.theguardian.com. April 14, 2015.

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• Blockading squadrons are a means whereby nations seek to prevent their enemies from trading; protective tariffs are a means whereby nations attempt to prevent their own people from trading. What protectionism teaches us, is to do to ourselves in time of peace what enemies seek to do to us in time of war.

  Henry George

  War, Mean, People

  "Protection or Free Trade?". Book by Henry George, ch. 6, 1886.

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• For example, the supporters of tariffs treat it as self-evident that the creation of jobs is a desirable end, in and of itself, regardless of what the persons employed do. That is clearly wrong. If all we want are jobs, we can create any number--for example, have people dig holes and then fill them up again, or perform other useless tasks. Work is sometimes its own reward. Mostly, however, it is the price we pay to get the things we want. Our real objective is not just jobs but productive jobs--jobs that will mean more goods and services to consume.

  Milton Friedman

  Jobs, Real, Mean

  Milton Friedman, Rose Friedman (1990). “Free to Choose: A Personal Statement”, p.58, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• There is no legislation--I care not what it is--tariff, railroads, corporations, or of a general political character, that all equals in importance the putting of our banking and currency system on the sound basis proposed in the National Monetary Commission plan.

  William Howard Taft

  Character, Political, Sound

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• In 1833, protection was abandoned, and a tariff was established by which it was provided that we should, in a few years, have a system of merely revenue duties.

  Henry Charles Carey

  Years, Protection, Abandoned

  Henry Charles Carey (1859). “The Slave Trade, Domestic and Foreign: Why it Exists, and how it May be Extinguished”, p.365

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• The free-trade idea, logically applied, will abolish usury; and with usury will disappear the chief bone of contention between labor and capital. But, just at this point, free-traders go over to the enemy; and many writers on political economy, in flat contradiction of the essential principles of that science, have made elaborate arguments to prove self-government in finance, impossible! What shall we think of men who, having dethroned kings, demolished popes, destroyed slave oligarchies and assailed tariff monopoly, advise submission to the most oppressive and dishonest of despotisms, Usury?

  Ezra Heywood

  Kings, Men, Thinking

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