Yep.
We are currently running a 27% deficit. Wed have to cut $1.8 trillion from our deficit to balance the budget. Cutting that in less than 10 years would likely trigger a massive recession.
Tarrifs sound good on paper to raise money, but there are 2 problems.
1. Every dollar you make me pay in a tarrifs I'm passing the vast majority on to my customer, aka the US consumer. It's just a tax on the consumer which will disproportionately affect middle to lower income workers since a higher percentage of their income is spent on goods vs services.
2. You have to expect foreign nations to match if not exceed your tarrifs. This will be passed on to US companies in the same manor as foreign companies are "punished" in our tarrifs. US companies will also pass as much as possible on to its customers, but will absorb some costs as well that will affect profits and inevitably force job cuts.
I would assume it's going to be harder for US companies to pass on tarrifs because we are almost entirely exporting commodities and luxury items which are both price sensitive vs the cheap Chinese shìt we import like Christmas ornaments and corn on the Cobb holders that are not price sensitive. Brazilian farmers and German automakers will steal market share from American exports.
But even if it's balanced, the net effect of a tariff war is you only win based on the amount of your trade deficit since the import and export tarrifs effectively offset each other. So all that work for let's say 30% in tarrifs is going to be a gain on our deficit which currently sits around $70 billion a year. We are almost better off with an export tax on select US goods that can pass on the costs instead of facing a tariff war where other countries will try to screw us by putting their tariffs on items that can't handle them.
We won't gain any jobs from iteither because we don't have any 17ing workers. Everyone is too old or too lazy to work. Which is our real problem.
So 17 tarrifs. The only solutions we have at this point to get to a balanced budget are entitlement reform and fixing corporate and individual tax loopholes. I fear way too many special interests will lobby Congress to block the loophole reform and nobody will ever get elected again by touching Social Security, Medicare, and Welfare. But that's where the deficit is, it's where it's always been. Clinton balanced the budget because today's mass hoards of retired old farts were at peak earnings 30 years ago and the lazy àsses of America hadn't figured out how to milk the system yet.
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My theory is this. The only long term solution left is fixing Washington to eliminate career politicians. 87% of America agrees on term limits. So let's actually 17ing put them in for once.
Here's my fix.
Extend terms to 4 or 6 years for the house and put a cap on everything to less than 20 years with 8 additional if you become president. You cannot leverage your political service into becoming a lobbyist, consultant, or work for a foreign entity when you are done. Now that we kneecapped the snakes and geriatric mooches maybe we have enough people not worried about getting reelected to get tough legislation passed.
Social Security not starting until 70-75 is a start. Yeah it sucks, but when 65 was chosen in 1935 our average lifespan was 62. Now we are at 77-1/2. A 75 year old today is way more capable of working than a 65 year old was in 1935 on average. And we are exactly pulling plows with a mule or bending steel with a hammer and anvil anymore.
And man we need to fix immigration. This country was built on ambitious hard working freedom seeking mother17ers risking life and limb to cross an ocean to come make something for themselves instead of living in a place where who your daddy was means more than the grit in your stomach. Looking around today, the generations have taken that grit out of most of our stomach and we are wimps that run from physical labor like it's an unmasked baby coughing in the self checkout line at Target.
