Are Tariffs a Government Theft of your Property?
Tariffs will certainly raise prices at home. That’s their purpose. Tariffs are taxes. When a product crosses the border, a tariff adds a fee. The item is the same, the seller worked no harder, but government tilted the scale to favor domestic goods.So here’s the real question. If the state forces you to pay more than the market demands, and the extra money flows to a private pocket and not to a public good, is that a government theft of your property? It’s not as black and white as saying yes.Trade Walls and the Great Collapse(Background: somber string swell. An overture to a tragedy.)In 1929 America walked to the cliff’s edge. On the day historians now call Black Monday, October 28, the stock market plunged 13 percent. The next day, it fell another 12. And the slide continued.By mid‑November the market had surrendered half its value. But this was no abstract loss for wealthy speculators. Credit froze. Banks failed. Capital vanished.The drop tore through real people’s lives. Factories emptied, foreclosures surged, crime climbed. City tax bases collapsed; boarded windows lined dark streets. In manufacturing-heavy cities like Detroit and Chicago, unemployment reached 40 percent. On the plains, farmers who had expanded acreage during World War I and loaded themselves with debt to feed Allied armies now could not sell grain for the cost of planting it. Some burned corn for heat because coal was more expensive. Families lived in makeshift shacks made from scrap wood and tar paper.The shock ran so deep it took twenty-five years and twenty-five days, an entire generation, to recover. Only on November 23, 1954, did the Dow Jones Industrial Average climb back to its 1929 peak.It took the Second World War, an immense post‑war industrial boom, and the rise of a broad middle class to erase the wounds opened in those brutal weeks of 1929.…But in 1929, the nation was still reeling.Into that chaos stepped two well-meaning legislators: Senator Reed Smoot of Utah and Congressman Willis Hawley of Oregon. Smoot chaired the Senate Finance Committee. Hawley led the House Ways and Means Committee. Both were Republicans. Their fix looked simple on paper. They intended to raise tariffs and shield American jobs, especially in struggling farms and factories.Tariffs were nothing new. All through the nineteenth century they filled the federal treasury and sheltered northern mills before an income tax even existed. But by 1930, the economy was global. Exports mattered. War‑debtor Europe owed the United States billions, and America needed foreign buyers to keep those payments flowing. The system was fragile, stretched by World War I debts and sliding prices.This fragile system was about to get kicked in the teeth.Smoot and Hawley introduced their bill in 1929 as a narrow farm measure. Washington lobbyists smelled opportunity. Amendments poured in. Every senator, every representative, tacked on protection for home‑state industries. The schedule exploded.Tariffs climbed on more than twenty thousand imports, including shoes, lumber, eggs, cement, even musical instruments.[Sound cue: typewriters clacking rapidly, fading into thunder]Over a thousand economists signed a letter urging President Hoover to veto it. They warned it would spark retaliation and crush trade. Hoover, boxed in by party pressure and a panicked electorate, signed the Smoot‑Hawley Tariff Act into law on June 17, 1930.…That’s when the backlash began.Canada struck first, taxing American wheat and produce. Europe followed. Germany, France, Britain. The global economy was already fragile. Retaliation sent it into a spiral. Within a few years world trade fell more than sixty percent. American exports were cut in half. Factories shut their gates. Jobs vanished. Farms that hoped for relief found only isolation.[Background: wind blowing through an empty field]Unemployment soared past 20 percent. Dust storms rolled across the heartland.The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act didn’t cause the Great Depression. But it poured gasoline on the fire. It bruised American credibility and hardened global resentment. The lesson came fast and harsh: Economic nationalism backfires in a global crisis. Economists still cite the Smoot-Hawley Act as proof that fear-driven policy can deepen disaster .Voters felt the pain. In the 1930 midterms, Republicans lost both chambers of Congress by huge margins. Smoot and Hawley were “shown the door.”Even progressive Republicans who had campaigned for Hoover switched sides and backed Democrat Franklin Roosevelt in 1932. By his inauguration on March 4, 1933, banks were closing, unemployment hovered near twenty-five percent, and prices and productivity had fallen to one-third of their 1929 level .We now know FDR would lead the country through the Great Depression and to victory in World War II. He would go on to win four consecutive presidential campaigns. It would take 20 years and a war hero named Dwight Eisenhower for the Republicans to win the presidency again.Decades later, economists point to the Smoot-Hawley Act as the moment protectionism went too far.What are Tariffs?A tariff is a border tax. Each time a shipment enters the United States, from raw materials to cars, the US importer pays the tariff before the goods clear customs. That cost travels through the supply chain until it lands in the shopper’s cart.The Constitution calls such a fee an impost and grants only Congress the power to levy it.In the early Republic, tariffs kept the government running. We only had to pay for a small army, a handful of diplomats, and debt payments. Customs duties and land sales covered it all. No income tax. No redistribution. In that setting, tariffs were neutral revenue.Today, they play a different role. Lawmakers use them to shield selected industries. The higher price never builds a road or pays the debt. It settles in the profit line of the firm that now faces less competition.As a buyer, you pay more, without consent, to subsidize a private interest. The protected company can hold prices high and still move product. That extra margin is private gain created by government design.So the question stands.If the state makes you pay more than the market asks and the surplus flows to a private pocket, are tariffs a government theft of your property?Are Tariffs a Government Theft of Your Property?Let’s look first through the lens of the individual and their natural rights. The decisive purpose of governance is to preserve your life, liberty, and estate. Life is your own being. It includes every decision that keeps you alive and whole. By nature, you own yourself. Liberty is the right to choose a path that leads to fulfillment. When we chart our own course, we observe, plan, and act. Our choices bring results, good or bad, and from those results we develop skill, talent, and personal responsibility. What we do matters, but who we become by doing it matters more. Estate is the concrete result of that pursuit of happiness. It is your paycheck, the land you work, your tools, the food on your table, the heat in your house. It is everything earned by your labor and freely exchanged with others.We consent to governance so our representatives can preserve those rights. When government collects taxes to keep the peace, enforce contracts, and build institutions that enable Americans born in trailers and penthouses alike to be great, it strengthens the pillars. When it shifts wealth from many citizens to a favored few, it weakens them.The Constitution reflects that balance. Article I empowers Congress to collect tariffs to promote the general welfare. But that power has limits. The spending must serve everyone, not private lobbies. When public money settles in private hands, it no longer serves the people. It serves the powerful.America was built to protect the weak, not exalt the well‑connected. We owe allegiance to no king, no oligarch.And there is a second lens: not just citizen, but creator, builder, innovator, entrepreneur; anyone who brings something new into the world through mind and labor.The Creator’s RightsNow let’s switch lenses and see tariffs through the eyes of the creator, the builder, the entrepreneur.Creators share the same trinity of rights every person holds: life to think and act, liberty to choose a path, and estate to keep the value they earn. A competitive market is simply those rights at work.This market sets conditions supporting freedom from coercion, not shelter from stronger rivals. Every creator is an end in themselves. A business must win customers by persuasion, never by force. The moment a company runs to government for a tariff that inflates a rival’s cost, competition ends and confiscation begins, without the buyer’s consent. A tariff used in this way becomes legal plunder. It lifts money from many pockets and drops it into one. Real competition is buyers and sellers meeting on equal terms, each free to walk away. The state’s duty is to protect that freedom, not tilt it.The Constitution backs this logic. The Commerce Clause lets Congress regulate trade “to promote the general welfare.” That mandate directs open, dependable markets. Congress may clear barriers, chase fraud, and keep trade lanes clear. It may not enrich one faction by taxing all others. When tariffs privilege a lobby, they break the spirit of fair play.A competitive market environment rests on three conditions: First, rule of law that protects contracts and property. Second, a neutral government that blocks entry to no one and grants no special favors. Third, open information that lets every buyer and seller judge value for themselves.When we establish and maintain this business environment, the rights of the producer and the rights of the consumer align, because every exchange is voluntary. Businesses have a right to a fair and competitive arena. This means an arena free of special privilege, not free of challenge.Viewed this way, broad tariffs distort consent, misalign incentives, and reward political access over earned value.But that’s not the end of the debate.There are serious arguments in favor of tariffs. They can defend national security, answer foreign coercion, or shelter a fragile industry long enough to stand on its own. Those claims deserve a closer look.The Strategic Case For TariffsTariffs are strategically compelling in three areas.First, tariffs are needed for national security. Some items are too important to depend on other countries. America needs to be able to build each and every piece of an Abrams tank or a Strike Eagle fighter inside the country. We need the inherent capability to make every part, from computer chips for fighter jets to rare earth magnets for guided missiles. If we can’t build these items in-house, and a war or embargo cuts the supply, we won’t be able to achieve national objectives. A tariff can push factories to build those parts here at home. Yes, it adds cost, but it pays for itself in risk. Second, trade only works when both countries play by the rules. If another country blocks our products, forces us to hand over technology, or pays heavy subsidies to its own firms, our businesses can’t compete. A targeted tariff can be a bargaining chip. Third, young industries. Some businesses start with big upfront costs and need time to grow strong. Early American steel, Japanese cars in the 1950s, and South Korean shipyards in the 1970s all asked for short-duration tariffs while they scaled up. The need to protect these infant capabilities was clear, so they could compete on their own later.But all three of these examples share a commonality. Tariffs must serve everyone, not just one company. Except for national security, they must be temporary and end once the goal is reached. And they must pass scrutiny. Tariffs must end if industry prices stay artificially high or innovation stalls.In short, strategic tariffs can be justified if they are narrow, temporary, and transparent. Broad tariffs rarely meet that test.So, are tariffs a government theft of your property?Tariffs lift prices at home. That is their purpose. They are taxes paid each time an import crosses the border.If Congress paired those duties with equal tax cuts for ordinary families, tariffs might serve American families. That rarely happens. Relief flows upward instead. Right now, Congress looks to extend the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which “skews in favor of wealthy Americans, who would see more tax relief not only in the dollar amount but as a percentage of income.” Without offset, a tariff is simply a hidden tax. Working families, not wealthy ones, pay the price.Broad, permanent duties threaten your estate. They drain wealth from many and deliver it to a privileged few. Prices climb, choice shrinks, competition thins, all without consumer consent.Still, not every tariff is unjust. A measure that truly guards national security or corrects foreign coercion can be justified, if it stays targeted, temporary, and transparent. It must protect the whole country, not just favored producers.The real question is motive. Does a tariff serve the nation or the wealthy lobby?In the end, every tariff faces a single test. The Constitution outlines six national goals: union, justice, tranquility, defense, welfare, and liberty. Do these tariffs move us closer to even one?If a tariff is targeted, temporary, and transparent, the answer can be yes. Tariffs that genuinely protect national security, level the playing field against foreign coercion, or briefly shelter critical new industries can enhance our union, strengthen justice, and provide for the common welfare.But broad, permanent tariffs that enrich a handful of companies at everyone else’s expense do the opposite. They weaken economic justice, disrupt domestic tranquility, and erode personal liberty. They tilt America away from fairness and toward privilege. They distort incentives, drive up costs, and quietly confiscate property.So, the answer to our question depends entirely on intent and design. Good tariffs serve clear national goals that benefit everyone, while bad tariffs serve only private interests.If we can’t clearly explain how a tariff moves America closer to at least one of our goals, then we already have our answer.May God bless the United States of America.Music from #Uppbeathttps://uppbeat.io/t/hele/the-wolf-the-bearLicense code: MZQHKZONYCHE3JS3 Get full access to I Believe at joelkdouglas.substack.com/subscribe
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