Does anyone realize that when you tax imports it hurts your exports too, because the foreign country can not earn purchasing power?

Yeah, I learned that in Econ 1 more than 50 years ago. If you observe a lot of misunderstanding it's because of the company you keep.

Our trade never has been 2 way. Do we need sugar or tobacco, crap plastic toys, junk electronics, and garbage clothes? What do we import, that we could not make a superior product of at home for 10-15% more than it costs now, only ours will work. So we go a few weeks without fresh fruits at times of the year, big deal!

That pretty much applies to all forms of taxation. When you tax citizens they have less money to spend on goods and services. All taxation hurts the economy because it takes money out of it.

Yes, and GE has already announced price increases on their products. The American public is going to end up paying for all of this which they don't seem to realize. Tariffs on Mexican products means we pay more- to build a pointless wall.

Neo-mercantalists dont understand the idea of a global economy. all they can understand is trade deficits. They cant tell you how these deficits exist, or how they are bad, they just see a negative number and assume it is bad.

No

Taxing imports actually just leads to most companies increasing their price for your country, your citizens end up just paying more money for the product and essentially you can think of it as your citizens really just paying the tax to the government.

@Anonymous

China doesn't do any such thing mr conspiracy theorist. Most Chinese people cannot afford American products, America first of all doesn't produce many products and what little products they do produce are very expensive compared to Chinese products.

This is why Chinese people buy products from their own country or other countries in Indochina.

How many Chinese people can afford an American car? Grow up.

In China you can buy new cars for $4000, but the average US car is $33,000.

@Gungy

China is a manufacturing country, the USA is not.

You have trade deficits with every manufacturing country because of this. If your economy isn't based on manufacturing then you are going to have trade deficits with any country based on manufacturing that you deal with.

The USA doesn't even produce enough products for it's own population for god sake and relies heavily on foreign production.

This doesn't mean that you are losing BTW, look at the value of the USD. Other rich countries like Singapore also are at a trade deficit with China, yet they have a much more valuable currency and powerful economy per capita. Having a manufacturing based economy isn't the only way to have a powerful economy and powerful currency.

You have a naive assumption that all trade is fair trade, when over and over, China for example has penalized American imports and artificially supported their own exports. So, what is America to do, except try and balance things out with other tariffs?

Build the wall