No. of Recommendations: 4
How about someone who apparently believes that foreign countries pay tariffs to the U.S.?
Same thing. If you don't have a background in economics, you might not really understand how tax incidence works. Lots of very smart people believe the analogous thing about corporate taxes, and will vigorously dispute that taxing corporations involves imposing some amount of cost on those corporations' customers. Or that imposing taxes on fossil fuel companies might result in higher energy prices.
Plus, one of Trump's political "gifts" is understanding that you're better off saying things that might be wrong in the details, but communicate your point - and a lot of politicians do this. Progressive politicians deny that imposing taxes or other regulatory burdens on companies will increase the prices of their goods - and if you sat them down with a gun to their heads, the ones who have a background in economics will admit that yes, the price elasticity of their products probably isn't zero and there might be some incidence of the regulatory or tax burden that falls to end users. But that's not their point. They know that it's dumb to say that businesses will pay 94% of the cost of a "windfall" tax (or whatever). It's better to just round that up and simplify, and have your message be that you're taxing bad companies and not the American people. Because even though it's wrong in the details, it right in the message.
So too with Trump. I think he believes that the tax incidence that will fall to American end users of products is super-low. So rather than saying something wonky like, "Foreign firms located abroad will absorb 93.4% of the economic impact of this tariff," he just says something simple that "other countries will pay the tariff."
