Ed Gresser, PPI’s Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets, published an analysis of the impact and opportunities of tariffs earlier this week. Tariffs and Economic Isolationism: Four Principles for a Response uses the following four principles to “bridge the Constitutional, economic, strategic, and political issues the various Trump proposals raise.”
- Defend the Constitution and oppose attempts to rule by decrees.
- Connect tariff policy, both as taxation and trade policy, to growth, work, prices and family budgets, and living standards.
- Stand by America’s neighbors and allies.
- Offer a positive alternative.
Gresser highlights the fact that there already are substantial tariffs on key consumer products, including apparel and footwear:
Congress can ease the cost of living by reforming the permanent tariff system, stripping regressivity and sexism out of the clothing, silverware, shoe, and other consumer goods schedules — where hundreds of lines simply raise the prices of cheap mass-market goods not made in the U.S. for decades, and the higher rates imposed on women’s clothes as opposed to men’s extracts $2.5 billion from women each year — and making the functioning of this system transparent.
We encourage USFIA members to read the analysis as we prepare for the possibility of more tariffs.