PICK A FIGHT WITH OUR FOUNDERS ON TARIFFS, TRADE, AND IMMIGRATION? NO THANK YOU.
Tariffs which tax imports, cutting off trade with other nations, and anti-immigrant policies were declared on July 4, 1776 to be 3 of the 27 specific causes of the Revolutionary War which our nation’s Founders, America's original Patriots, waged against the feudal unitary executive, the English King, and His policies in the American Colonies.
The American Colonies had already been around for 156 years, since the November 21, 1620 arrival of the Mayflower with 102 Pilgrim souls, 49 of whom died, while 53 survived the privations, disease, and starvation of that first winter with the help of native peoples. Our Founders understood the life-and-death stakes, knew what made the American economy work, and what was in the way of their prosperity. It was the King, then our unitary executive and our chief decider of policies and law, who was strangling and sabotaging the Founder's "unalienable rights" to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
During the Revolutionary War, American Patriot soldiers, raiders, and marines fought and died for five years in running battles and raids against the King's troops. 14 of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence (25%) were killed or died after torture. Another 12 of the 56 signers (21%) had their homes ransacked and burned, while 2 signers lost sons in the Revolutionary Army; and another signer had 2 of his sons captured. Their rebellious countrymen lived under the constant threat of British reprisals - burning, looting, harassment, arbitrary arrest, and torture.
The individual liberty, property rights, religious freedom, and economic prosperity which the Founder's own immigrant forebears had come to America to secure for themselves, their families, and their communities, meant everything to them. They sacrificed their lives so we might not live under the unitary tyranny of any single decider, a King, and His group of privileged and connected friends, running our lives and determining the fate of all the People.
From 1775 at the battles of Lexington and Concord, through the 1776 Congressional Declaration of war, until 1781, our Founders directly challenged the 156 year colonial rule of America by the unitary executive, the English King. In 1781, they won as the King withdrew his troops from the American Colonies. The American experiment in democracy was born - to a rough start operating under the Founder's 1781 Articles of Confederation. The thirteen colonies, now states, began fighting among themselves – over commerce, taxation, borders, and myriad other issues.
The Founder's regrouped in 1787, held the Constitutional Convention, and our Constitution was ratified in 1788 "to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…" These words, together with the first ten constitutional amendments, our Bill of Rights, defined the Founder's core purposes for our American government. Federalism was born as three co-equal branches with separation of powers among all three - Congress, Executive (Presidency), and Supreme Court.
But freedom is not free, it requires vigilance to avoid being trampled by the selfish interests of a privileged few over the broad common interests of the People.....
WE HAVE FORGOTTEN HOW WE BECAME PROSPEROUS….
The economic issues here are not directly related to the illegal bioweapon, racketeering and rights program and litigation - but are directly on point regarding economic privation, subjugation, and inequality, which the King, the unitary executive, had imposed on His American Colonies. Those failed policies, which angered our Founders to war, have crept back into the national conversation – disguised as opportunities.
But those failed policies – tariffs on imported products protested in 1773 at the Boston Tea Party, protectionist cutting off of trade with other nations to favor the King's mercantile friends over Americans, and anti-immigrant policies which retarded American economic growth - were 3 of the 27 major policy disputes which caused the Founder's to engage in the Revolutionary War against the King. They fought to banish those bad policies, which they knew as practical people including tradesmen, farmers, merchants, bankers, and news publishers, were holding back Americans seeking prosperity, and constraining their freedom from the King's arbitrary police powers and His favoritism of a few privileged people over the many others.
Since then, regular Americans - including our family - my great-great grandfather, a religious Quaker, Civil War US Army Private 2nd NY Cavalry bugler, and Medal of Honor winner at the Battle of Appomattox which ended the Civil War in 1865, as well as my own father and uncle - and millions of others from activists to veterans - have repeatedly fought to defeat those same bad policies - which favor a few, perpetuate their economic privilege, and impose added taxes called tariffs, as well as privation, subjugation, and inequality on regular, everyday people – here in America, and around the world.
To better understand the key components which make up the American economy, American prosperity, and the impacts of tariffs, check out these links:
Spending and investment make up total Gross Domestic Product. Note that federal government spending at Item 3 in this linked article is actually about $7 trillion. The $1.8 trillion figure is what the government spent above what it took in as taxes. That spending above tax revenue is the federal deficit, the amount of debt ($1,800,000,000,000) we are passing on to our children from Washington, DC for that one year period:
https://www.thebalancemoney.com/components-of-gdp-explanation-formula-and-chart-3306015
Job multipliers by industry type and how they build more American employment:
https://www.epi.org/publication/updated-employment-multipliers-for-the-u-s-economy/
History of tariff impacts reducing trade, overall investment, asset values, and personal incomes in the American economy:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Smoot-Hawley-Tariff-Act
How consumer spending powers the US economy:
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/americas-19-trillion-consumer-economy-in-one-chart/
Wealth distribution as wealth inequality has grown over the past thirty years under the tax and economic policies set in Washington, DC:
https://news.research.stlouisfed.org/2019/07/fred-adds-wealth-distribution-data/
You can clearly see the actual negative effects of lower tax rates for high wealth and income investors on American economic growth in recent American history below. Just below that is a similar scholarly treatment which affirms this progressive tax rates approach to tax policy as a key driver of long-term economic growth, published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. Also see our Founders views on tariffs and taxes at the Tariffs And Taxes webpage: https://banbrainhacks.org/tariffs-and-taxes Our Founders held strong views about immigration's role in national prosperity as well, see the Right Sized Workforce webpage at https://banbrainhacks.org/right-sized-workforce
You can clearly see the actual negative effects of lower tax rates for high wealth and income investors on American economic growth in recent American history below. The table shows a simplified view of American economic growth since the early 1960s.
Private sector economic growth has collapsed since the dramatic tax cuts on the highest incomes and highest valued estates beginning in the early 1980s.
Unsustainable debt-fueled growth in federal government spending has added about $35 trillion of national debt since the 1980s while private sector real growth has declined from around 6% per year to below 0%.
Lowering tax rates for higher incomes has increasingly driven investors to chase short-term gains from speculative investments and by manipulating company finances, and to disfavor investing in the challenge and risks involved in building and growing companies long term. This has led to a shrinking private sector economy which will be unable to support continuing long term growth of our national debt.
A similar scholarly treatment affirming progressively higher tax rates for higher incomes and wealth as a key tax policy driver of long-term economic growth is shown below, published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
FRB Dallas is part of the nation's 12 district Federal Reserve system, a self-sustaining system created in 1913 under President Teddy Roosevelt to reduce the number of bank failures and currency collapses which had led to nationwide financial panics and stifled economic growth in prior decades.
This system was bolstered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in 1933, early in the Great Depression to restore confidence in the banking system after many early 1930s bank failures left depositors with no money as they failed. The FDIC deposit insurance fund is funded by an insurance premium on deposits paid by member banks. Both the Federal Reserve and FDIC set policy and conduct routine audits of member banks to safeguard the nation's financial system.
Together, the FRB and FDIC keep short-term monetary policy out of the hands of politicians who are more concerned about their next election than the long-term health of the American economy, and operate professionally to sustain the relative stability of the banking and payments system which our economy, companies, and jobs rely on.