Taxes

Some Thoughts on Trump, Free Trade, and Horses

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A friend sent a link to a leaked, recorded conversation between Trump and Wilbur Ross, his nominee for Commerce Secretary. There is nothing particularly troubling in the conversation. Trump is talking like Trump. He is the same person in public and in private, which is nice.

I responded:

Sounds good to me.   A tariff is a consumption tax collected at the port of entry.   The American founders expected to fund the operations of the national government with revenue from a tariff, and it worked.   He is also right that the Japanese and other countries use safety regulations as non-tariff import barriers.   There is nothing bad on here at all.  

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Trump and Conflicts of Interest.

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Trump is organizing his administration but he is facing another crisis.

The Wall Street Journal is giving him painful and unwelcome but good advice.

He must liquidate the family business.

One reason 60 million voters elected Donald Trump is because he promised to change Washington’s culture of self-dealing, and if he wants to succeed he’s going to have to make a sacrifice and lead by example. Mr. Trump has so far indicated that he will keep his business empire but turn over management to his children, and therein lies political danger.

Mr. Trump has for decades run the Trump Organization and during the campaign said if he won the Presidency he’d turn over the keys to Donald Jr., Eric and Ivanka, all of whom are now serving on the Trump transition. A company spokesperson says the family business is “in the process of vetting various structures” and that the ultimate arrangement “will comply with all applicable rules and regulations.”

Some of Mr. Trump’s lawyers have called the plan a “blind trust,” which past Presidents have used to protect their assets from the appearance of conflicts-of-interest. But that set-up typically involves liquid assets like bonds and stocks, not buildings or a branding empire. Mr. Trump will know how any given decision will affect, say, the old post office property in Washington, D.C. that he’s leasing from the federal government (another conflict). By law blind trusts are overseen by an independent manager, not family members.

The Journal is correct. I don’t know how Trump is going to do this but he has to.

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Paying Higher Taxes Can be Very Profitable (rerun)

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(originally published in 2010 and now an April perennial)

Chevy Chase, MD, is an affluent suburb of Washington DC. Median household income is over $200K, and a significant percentage of households have incomes that are much, much higher. Stores located in Chevy Chase include Tiffany & Co, Ralph Lauren, Christian Dior, Versace, Jimmy Choo, Nieman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Saks-Jandel.

PowerLine  observed that during the 2008 election season, yards in Chevy Chase were thick with Obama signsand wondered (in 2009) how these people were  now  feeling about the prospect of sharp tax increases for people in their income brackets.

The PowerLine guys are very astute, but I think they missed a key point on this one. There are substantial groups of people who stand to benefit financially from the policies of the Obama and company, and these benefits can greatly  outweigh  the costs of any additional taxes that these policies require them to pay. Many of the residents of Chevy Chasea very high percentage of whom get their income directly or indirectly from government activitiesfall into this category.

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“We Were Poised for Real Criminal Justice Reform”

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Indeed.

Something similar happened in the early ’90s. It looked as though a political consensus favoring smaller government was taking shape. Republicans with a well-considered smaller-govt agenda took over the Congress and the Democrats started to cut deals with them. Then the Oklahoma City bombing happened, the Clinton Democrats outmaneuvered the Gingrich Republicans over the government shutdown, and the smaller-government impetus was weakened considerably (we did get cap-gains tax cuts, welfare and a few other reforms that did a lot of good in the subsequent decade).

But then Sept. 11, 2001 and the Middle East war kicked much of what was left of the smaller-government movement over the far horizon, and since 2009 a hard-Left executive branch has been extending and doing its best to entrench post-Reagan government expansion.

There are tides in the affairs of men. The problem with tides is that they can go out for a long time before they reverse and start to come in. Let’s hope that the statist tide has finally run its course and that we are near a reversal.