>American big box stores are full of so much junk no one actually needs. It is good for there to be a tax on it.
Seems pretty paternalistic to me. Why not let people decide for themselves whether they "actually need" the $5 plastic trinket from china? Do you not trust adults to make informed decisions on what they're buying?
The argument is that $5 retail price comes nowhere close to capturing the true cost of the item. If the items were priced to have all their negative externalities included, such as loss of American jobs, fair labor, slave labor, environmental damage, shipping subsidies, etc, the bill would be much more than $5 and far fewer people would rationally buy them.
The free rational market has no way to price these in.
Tobacco and alcohol, both of which have objective, measurable negative health outcomes supported by decades of research, versus some vague notion of "junk products" as defined by... who? And this is without even getting into the fact that the tariffs will raise the price of everything, not just these supposed "junk products."
Why not tax the negative factors then, rather than the country of origin?
i.e. If the price is supposed to be a lever for labor conditions, why just tax China heavily and not Bangladesh?
Why tax more fuel-efficient European cars instead of American-Built Jeep Grand Cherokees?
And if reducing plastic waste is the priority, why would Trump's day include unbanning plastic straws?
Answer: It's not actually about reducing negative externalities, it's about geopolitics, otherwise it wouldn't be so negatively weighted towards a single actor.
In theory we already penalize 5mpg cars with gas guzzler taxes, CAFE penalties and gas taxes. I think CAFE should be reworked to not penalize smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles i.e. no more light-duty truck bs.
Seems pretty paternalistic to me. Why not let people decide for themselves whether they "actually need" the $5 plastic trinket from china? Do you not trust adults to make informed decisions on what they're buying?