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Tariffs: Not a tax, and not free money

United States trade cargo container hanging against clouds background

Getty Images//Iskandar Zulkarnean

Tariffs: Not a tax, and not free money

During the recent election season, there was much talk of Trump’s plan to lay tariffs on the importation of foreign goods. Pundits, politicians, and journalists to the left of center consistently referred to them as a tax on the American people. Many of those to the right of center, especially those of the MAGA contingent, seemed to imply they are a pain-free way for the federal government to raise money.

Some correctly said that the country essentially ran on tariffs in its early history. Alexander Hamilton, the first Treasury Secretary and arguably the godfather of our initial financial system, successfully proposed and implemented a tariff system with two goals in mind. Fund the young American government and protect young American businesses against competition from established foreign companies. The second bill signed by President George Washington was a broad tariff bill.

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H-1B Visas, Cultural Failures, Weapons of Economic War

Illustrative picture showing application for USA H1B visa

Getty Images//Stock Photo

H-1B Visas, Cultural Failures, Weapons of Economic War

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy both came out recently in favor of expanding the H-1B visa program. This program allows large corporations to claim they cannot find adequate skilled talent (engineers for example) and sponsor a foreign worker to enter the United States to fill the required role.

The program itself is rife with abuse and inevitably and negatively affects American citizens by adding to the supply of talent and inevitably decreasing the price of such talent (wages).

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Donald Trump and Elon Musk

President-elect Donald Trump and Elon Musk sit ringside at a UFC fight in November.

Chris Unger/Zuffa LLC

Elon takes on Washington, but can he take it over?

Watching the year-end budget fights in Congress as we await the second term of President-elect Donald Trump, I find myself wondering: Will this era be remembered as the time when Trump was president and Elon Musk ran the country?

Trump earned such nicknames as “Captain Chaos” and worse for his unpredictable, constantly changing and easily distracted approach to governing. But close observers of Trump’s political ups and downs understand a key to understanding the chaos: his mountainous self-regard.

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Money surrounding the Capitol
Douglas Rissing/Getty Images

Corporate political dollars spotlighted by new interactive database

The Center for Political Accountability recently launched The Barbara and Morris Pearl 527 Interactive Database, a user-friendly system created to shine a spotlight on under-the-radar corporate political spending in the United States.

This groundbreaking tool provides detailed and targeted access to information on contributions from publicly traded American companies to major partisan political organizations called 527s, for the section of the IRS code that governs them.

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