import tariffs Quotes

Tariffs, quotas and other import restrictions protect the business of the rich at the expense of high cost of living for the poor. Their intent is to deprive you of the right to choose, and to force you to buy the high-priced inferior products of politically favored companies.

[Donald Trump rhetoric]this is a common rhetorical line used by people who are against free trade that say, we're in favor of trade; we just don't like any of the free trade deals that America has actually signed onto.

Protectionism is the institutionalization of economic failure.

Our country was built, to a large extent, on protecting our manufacturers. If you go back to Jefferson, you go back to all of these great, great people that ran the United States properly, it was really based on a certain form of tariff and a certain form of protection. We're just the opposite now.

What [Donald] has put up for question is this idea of tariffs. Initially, he said if China won't stop taking advantage of us and manipulating their currency, then I will put tariffs in place. That spooked everybody because if you charge China a fee and an extra tariff for anything they bring into the United States, what's going to happen is that companies carrying those goods are going to raise prices. It's going to be expensive for people. People got scared of that, but then he walked that [idea] back. I don't think anybody is expecting heavy tariffs on anything.

Revenue on the consumption of foreign articles is paid cheerfully by those who can afford to add foreign luxuries to domestic comforts.

It's so hard to get our goods into China. And when we do get in they charge us a huge surtax. They call it a surtax or a tariff. I call it a tax.

I love a reciprocal tax. Nobody can fight it, it's fair and it's something that we are working on very strongly.

If other countries don't impose a cost on carbon, then we will be at a disadvantage...we would look at considering perhaps duties that would offset that cost.

What you do is you say, fine, you want to go to Mexico or some other country, good luck. We wish you a lot of luck. But if you think you're going to make your air conditioners or your cars or your cookies or whatever you make and bring them into our country without a tax, you're wrong.

America is being absolutely devastated with bad trade deals.

Developing protectionism regarding trade and our reluctance to place fiscal policy on a more sustainable path are threatening what may well be our most valued policy asset: the increased flexibility of our economy, which has fostered our extraordinary resilience to shocks.

Sugar, rum and tobacco are commodities which are nowhere necessaries of life, which are become objects of almost universal consumption, and which are therefore extremely proper subjects of taxation.

Tariffs protect ill-considered government policies, such as costly regulations and high taxes on labor and capital that make our goods uncompetitive in international markets.

It must be observed that our revenues are raised almost wholly on imported goods.

What you do to China is you say if you don't behave we're going to have to start taxing your goods coming into our country.

When Donald Trump was first elected, there was a lot of fear of a trade war. They listened to Trump's rhetoric on the campaign. Oh, we're going to put a 45 percent tariff on China, a 35 percent tariff on Mexico. We haven't seen any of that.

Donald Trump talks a good game on trade, but he's never lived it. He's lined his pockets by outsourcing jobs to low-wage countries, and now he's talking about trade as if he actually means it?

When you look at a company like Amazon, one of the reasons that Amazon is one of the most powerful companies in the world is because we want to buy cheap stuff. If Donald Trump were to change trade laws, we couldn't buy the cheap stuff or in our Wal-Marts, they would cost a whole lot more.

You take a look at what's happening to steel and the cost of steel and China dumping vast amounts of steel all over the United States, which essentially is killing our steelworkers and our steel companies. We have to guard our energy companies. We have to make it possible.

The remaining revenue on the consumption of foreign luxuries to domestic comforts, being collected on our seaboard and frontiers only, and incorporated with the transactions of our mercantile citizens, it may be the pleasure and the pride of an American to ask, What farmer, what merchant, what laborer ever sees a tax gatherer of the United States?

I'm not a free trader, but I am a free trader, but I'm also a fare trader and a smart trader. I want to make sure that the United States gains something. So I think you would probably agree.

We have countries where, if we make a product and we send it to that country, they charge us 100 percent tax. If they make the same product and send it to us, we charge them nothing. You think that's smart? It's not.

What Donald Trump is focused on is a policy of trade that looks after the interests of the American worker, not just the overall GDP numbers. And that is what is resonating.

China is illegally dumping steel in the United States and Donald Trump is buying it to build his buildings, putting steelworkers and American steel plants out of business. That's something that I fought against as a senator and that I would have a trade prosecutor to make sure that we don't get taken advantage of by China on steel or anything else.