american people driving up the cost of our products, the government get the money. not like some industry gets the money, the government gets a money. if a country wants to do it to its own people why, should we do it to our people? that s right. it s a form of a tax. you look at the headlines, the u.s. is going to impose tariffs on china. not on china mark: we re going to get to china, you and i may disagree. let s talk about our allies. we re going to tax steel from canada or europe. that s not a tax on them, they don t pay the tax, we can t impose a tax on the foreign company. the american companies who import it into the u.s. pay the tax and pass it along in the form of higher prices to american consumers and american companies to use that as an input. mark: is there any question really that we re talking about special interest protectionism with tariffs in many cases, whether it s the steel industry or the aluminum industry and these are people, just being blunt about, their
would go along with that? no, that would be a great way to approach it. if we talk about free trade, nafta, 2,000-page negotiated contract or something like that, and again, the politicians get a payoff from their voters and supporters when they impose protectionism in ways they don t get when they support free trade. i think politically it s not viable, but from an economic standpoint, it would be a great mark: how many tariffs do we impose on the american people taxes? how many tariffs? i think it s in the thousands. mark: i think you and i have counted 12,000, slipped into bills to protect industries and give certain donations. you want to talk about the swamp, talk about entrenched bureaucracy. isn t that it? yeah, the idea that america is the big open market and is mean, the 25% tariff on trucks. the fact we don t allow foreign
doing that to protect their dairy markets. does that help us, hurt us? does it help them, hurt them? in general, as a country canada s tariffs are lower than america. more of a free market trading nation than the u.s. but if we look at a specific example, and, if the u.s., we pay twice the world price of sugar. mark: as a matter of fact, you once wrote that we have 12,000 tariffs in place on all kinds of products all across the board from all kinds of countries. taxing the american people for all kinds of products that we use every day. yeah, and including the 25% tariff that started in the 60s with what s called a chicken tax. we have a 25% tariff on imported pickup trucks. so that gives gm and ford and chrysler, 83% market share of that very valuable market, more than half the vehicles sold are truck, so they get the production. mark: does that mean the cost is higher for the american
have freedom of and allow the free market and the principles of a market economy to determine the direction. mark: is it pro american to be in favor of fair trade? well, it is, unless like i said before, when people use the term fair, it is almost always followed by government intervention to impose fairness on a situation they have determined to be unfair. so i think in principle, it s a fine ideal to have everything be fair in people s minds, but usually fair translates into government intervention whereas freedom and free trade means the absence or less government control on regulation. mark: do you think if we as a country proposed let s eliminate all barriers, all subsidies, all tariffs, all taxes of every kind and every private conserveans, do you think our government would go along with that? i don t think our government
american people driving up the cost of our products, the government get the money. not like some industry gets the money, the government gets a money. if a country wants to do it to its own people why, should we do it to our people? that s right. it s a form of a tax. you look at the headlines, the u.s. is going to impose tariffs on china. not on china mark: we re going to get to china, you and i may disagree. let s talk about our allies. we re going to tax steel from canada or europe. that s not a tax on them, they don t pay the tax, we can t impose a tax on the foreign company. the american companies who import it into the u.s. pay the tax and pass it along in the form of higher prices to american consumers and american companies to use that as an input. mark: is there any question really that we re talking about special interest protectionism with tariffs in many cases, whether it s the steel industry or the aluminum industry and these are people, just being blunt about, their