Mises showed that even then it is better for our country to refrain from imposing any tariffs. Exportia's workers in industries other than widget-making are the ones ultimately hurt by Exportia's widget subsidy.

The government generally has some authority to raise revenue "to pay the debts, and provide for the...welfare [of the country as a whole, not of individual citizens or government sub-units] and common defense." I would venture to suggest that import duties and such are the price of whatever physical protection the receiving country affords those who bring the cargo in.

Sure, but only if 'Freetradia' changes its name to 'Tariffia' or 'Protectionaria' depending on the underlying reasons...

The 'concept' of free trade means that the nation of Exportia has chosen to cut the price of widgets -- which Freetradia would conceptually accept as a business decision.

The decision to act should necessarily be based on the current & future importance of widgets to the economy of Freetradia.

If Exportia is obviously only subsidizing the price of widgets to harm Freetradia's infrastructure, then a tariff is warranted. If Exportia is/has positioned itself to produce & sell widgets at the new lower price now and forever, then they have simply out-competed the market, and tariffs would be protectionist.

The best way to get the Senate back to what it was is to repeal the Seventeenth Amendment and go back to having the Senators selected by their respective State Legislatures. The Senate was never intended to be a populist part of a bi-cameral legislature. That role was left to the House of Representatives.

There was another Gulcher who alerted me to the notion that the best way of reducing lobbying was to reinstate the secret ballot. I'm still up in the air, but the proposal certainly had enough data behind it to get me thinking. The basic contention is that since the bill which established roll-call voting (so everyone knows exactly how everyone votes), we have seen the explosion in the lucrative area of lobbying because they can directly tie their lobbying efforts to a financial payoff. If they have no way of knowing if a particular elected official actually voted for their proposal, these direct ties evaporate. The contention was that this makes lobbying efforts much harder to quantify, much harder to target, and allows the individual representatives the option to vote their conscience more than to vote for re-election. I can't say I'm 100% sold on the idea, but I couldn't just dismiss it out of hand either.

Suppose you go to a store that charges less for a particular product than another store? Does it matter if the more expensive store provides a better benefits package to its employees? Likewise, if one country decides to tighten the belt and sell something cheaper, aren't you benefitting from the lower cost? Is there a difference between a country outright subsidizing a product or a country subsidizing an industry or investing in research and development, resulting in more efficient production? Are you going to get upset if a country invests in education and its smarter inventors or smarter workforce produce better and more efficiently? I think that the answer is to get all the advantage that you can from the better and less expensive product and concentrate your efforts on another product that they don't have. An exception may be if a particular field is essential for national defense and it's capability is being intentionally ravaged.

Freetradia’s tariff would be unsustainable in the long run for the reason you mentioned, but so would Exportia’s subsidy. In the short run, other governments might institute a tariff for the same reasons as Freetradia. These tariffs would blunt the effectiveness of Exportia’s subsidies, and the threat of such tariffs might convince Exportia not to subsidize its manufacturers in the first place.

this is a classic "nose of the camel under the tent" scenario...how govt justifies intervention into business activity to "save" jobs, then to go on justify it's continued protectionism and interventionism...
it is the responsibility of "widget" company or industry to deal with "Exportia" by whatever means it is capable of, not to petition to govt to intervene on it's behalf..."Exportia" has lost all justification for it's continued existence...
the govt is limited to defend it's citizens against foreign "military" threat only...

I like the ideas of stopping withholding entirely, as well as your new-to-me idea of states paying for staff and instruments of elected official rather than the federal. It reminds me of an idea I had a long time ago where we jus made all Senate/House activity remote and avoided concentrating our congress-critters in one place to make lobbyists' jobs easier. It makes me wonder if, in keeping with the intent of the Senate, perhaps the State should be paying their salary, while leaving the House salaries to the fed.

It's different because no force is involved (as in Exportia forcibly taking money from its citizens to pay for the subsidy to its manufacturers).

I'm not sure where you get the idea that "if we find a way to fund the federal government, it will then not tax the citizens" is being presented so it seems a but of a straw man. Perhaps you could expound on why you think that idea is presented. What I presented was a way to limit it's funding avenues and provide a form of transparency to what is now a collusive process.

All governments must be funded in some fashion, so the premise that we can eliminate government growth by eliminating funding entirely is as poor as the idea that if the government funded candidates we'd get better candidates not beholden to "special interests".

Sure, they have the right, but it is always the consumer who pays for everything.

Suppose that, before Exportia creates subsidies, a third country Innovatia creates/patents a new technology that allows them to make widgets for much cheaper than Exportia or Freetradia...

How is this different than a subsidy?

Maybe Freetradia should just try to make cheaper widgets than Exportia. (Love those names by the way).
Old Dino has seen competition drive down the prices of PCs, cell phones, monthly phone bill prices, all kinds of stuff. I don't even have USA/Canada long distance anymore.

I question the idea that, if we find a way to fund the federal government, it will then not tax the citizens. Rather,
the more we fund it,
the more it grows,
the hungrier it gets,
the craftier it gets in promising groups benefits in exchange for votes...

Here is the wrench in this example: Freetradia are not the only purchasers of widgets. The rest of the world will buy Exportia's widgets, and stop buying Freetradia's widgets.

With the tariff, Freetradia's widget companies will die anyway, AND all of it's citizens will pay more for widgets.

The government as sovereign rights over the doings of their nation in such matters...

If Freetradia (which had a thriving 100 year old industry for Widgets from such powerhouses as General Widget, International Widget Corporation (Wigicorp), and Pillbug & Sons Widget Co.) decided to put a tariff on foreign Widgets (made by Pzorzia/Zbratznik of Exportia People's Widget Cooperative # 18) it's their right to do so. There's historical precedent (The US Tariff against 750+ cc motorcycles to try to save Harley Davidson from Japanese motorcycle manufacturers flooding the market)

Heck, they could put a tariff on a set of goods because they didn't like the color of the Premier of Exportia's hair.

Yes. once the jobs move to Exportia, no new jobs are created, ever.

Well said.

I forget which politician floated the idea, but there was actually a bill submitted that would prevent "ongoing" taxation - ie people having money taken out of their paychecks for tax purposes. They would have to pay Medicate, SS, FICA, etc. in one lump sum at tax time as an emphasis on just how much we pay in taxes. Needless to say it didn't get any traction, but I think that if the American people really saw a breakdown of how much they pay every year in taxes, we'd get a lot more calls for lower taxes.

One reminder: the whole notion of the rule that revenue and spending bills must originate in the House strongly supports the notion you build on that the States should pay shares towards Federal outlays in proportion to their population. I support the notion of proportional taxation. One idea I have floated is the notion of making all of the offices and staffing for elected officials in the House and Senate be paid for by their respective States - not out of a Federal Government slush fund. Aides, healthcare benefits - all of it subject to requisitions and oversight of their respective State legislatures.

Yes, a country does have a right...they can do whatever they want...the question is: should they. Are these imports important, is it something the receiving country needs and cannot produce on it's own.
What's confounded this issue is the cost of regulations, taxes and Union labor costs, not to mention all the other bennies that are attached to the price of goods. Reducing unnecessary anti competition regulations, taxes and unions would alone bring down the costs...and the workers would probably make out better TOO!

I've long been a proponent of what you mentioned here: returning to relying on tariffs and excise fees at the federal level. That said, I also think one route to eliminating federal income taxes (personal and corporate) is to divvy up the expenditures among the states based on percentage of population and let them experiment with how to collect the funds.

I think that would cause a downward pressure on federal expenditures. Of course, I think there are other factors that would boost this such as returning to Senators being selected by the State, not the people in the state. But having direct billing, as it were, allows for some of the political shenanigans to go away.

For example, right now many are elected based on claiming they brought/will bring so much money from the federal government. And the vast majority of us don't have the data to compare to how much the citizenry of the state pays out in the first place. Having that piece clearly and plainly available makes that comparison possible. As it has been shown in psychology that humans are more loss-adverse. By having the big numbers on how much the state and its people are "losing" in the form of a big fat check to the fedgov, that loss comes a bit back into visibility.

Some will say this will more heavily impact the smaller states. I say it only makes it more visible, rather than making it that way. In my analysis there are enough "smaller states" who have an equal weight vote in the Senate to serve as a counterweight to the eager spending habits of larger states.

While not a silver bullet, this combined with a return to federal focus on excise, tariffs, and fees is a solid route to a lower spending, smaller federal government. On top of that think of all the tricky and twisted games the federal government currently plays with funding. With the above equation visibly balanced, more attention can be paid to those games ("you get this money if you do that thing we can't require you to do").

Short Answer: It has the right if the citizenry of Freetradia decides it does.

However, to answer the underlying question of whether it should or not requires a deeper dive. The first stop on that road is how it could be done and if it would work.

Who pays the tariff? The first part of that answer is "Depends on where it is levied". The apparent desired goal there is to find a way where the foreign company pays it. Of course they will likely want to pass that on to the consumer in the form of a price hike. But does that achieve the goal? Perhaps.

The catch is in properly levying the tariff. To add it to the price of the good means Freetradia citizens actually pay it. So likewise if the importing company is from Frertradia you wouldn't levy it on the importer. Meaning you are left with levying it on the export company - as long as that company isn't owned by Freedtradia citizens. The moment that happens, well you're out of options for tariffs and have to look at limiting the quantity imported.

Limiting the quantity imported seems the most elegant in that it doesn't have the on-whom-to-levy the fees/tariffs problems above. I am sure there are plenty of problems here though - the first of which being where to set the limits. You'd have to come up with a purely objective and formulaic means to determine how much advantage is provided by the subsidy and how that translates into the limits. Otherwise the limits devolve very quickly into political tools and cronyism.

The first whiff of this does smell like protectionism. However, I think it is an open question as to whether that changes once a foreign government is involved - such as in direct subsidies. I suspect that unless it was very strictly defined and limited, what constitutes a government subsidy could become a political football. Does the U.S. Fedgov subsidize aircraft makers by using them for military jet production and NASA's use of them for rockets? I could see an argument in that direction given money is fungible.

It is a tricky question but for me it first comes down to how workable and effective it would be. Regardless of how much it may "make sense" to have a policy in response, if none of them actually work it makes no sense to use them.