Senator Josh Hawley recently proposed the federal government issue $600 tariff rebate checks per person—a family of four getting $2,400.
Such a deal he has for us!
What makes no sense is that in true Trumpian fashion, he is blaming President Biden for the perceived necessity for the checks. “Americans deserve a tax rebate after four years of Biden policies that have devastated families’ savings and livelihoods,” Hawley said as he announced his plan, and suggested, “My legislation would allow hard-working Americans to benefit from the wealth that Trump’s tariffs are returning to this country.”
Now, hold on a minute. He’s spouting totally misleading statements that rely on public ignorance of how tariffs work.
We are going to un-ignorance any of you who think other countries are paying the United States big taxes, the tariffs of which President Trump is so proud. They are not. WE are the ones taking it in the billfold. Britannica.com makes it easy to understand:
Let’s review how tariffs work. First, neither a foreign company nor its home country pays any additional tax when it brings products here. United States companies buying the products are the ones paying a tax (the tariff) to Customs and Border Protection at the port of entry. They pay the foreign manufacturer the price of the goods and then they pay an additional amount to CBP before the products are released to them.
And how do those companies recover that extra fee, including the tariffs President Trump seems to arbitrarily set? As the illustration shows, they make you and me pay more for our Korean refrigerator, our Canadian steel, our Chinese fireworks, Indonesian shirts, etc. We already are seeing some stores post signs telling customers how much more items cost because of the President’s tariffs. He’s intimidates some companies into not doing that. But he can’t scare all of them.
Therefore, Hawley’s proposal would have the federal government give us a rebate check to offset some of the extra money that we are paying for foreign-made products because of the Trump tariffs and we will use that money to buy more products with inflated costs because of the tariffs.
This is an economic program based on the Menard’s rebate system.
So, when Hawley says, ““My legislation would allow hard-working Americans to benefit from the wealth that Trump’s tariffs are returning to this country,” he is indulging in nothing short of verbal sleight of hand. There is no money “returning to this country.” It is here already and WE will pay it. In effect, he proposes putting some money in our right-hand pocket after the Trump tariffs take money out of our left-hand pocket.
Six hundred dollars might not come close to reimbursing us for our tariff-increased out-of-pocket expenses in the purchase of a new car, or the accumulated costs of less costly things we buy throughout the year.
And how much will this gracious gesture cost our debt-ridden federal government? How much of the tariff-raised money that could go toward reducing the Trumpian increase in our national debt will instead be sent back to us as a fake bonus?
A few days ago the census bureau put our national population at 342,201,496.
In our calculations, we probably are over-simplifying the math and the subtleties of who would be eligible for a rebate. We don’t know, for example how many of those 342.2 million people are criminals, mental patients, gang members, and drug-sellers from south of the border who wouldn’t be eligible to receive anything and, if the administration has its way, won’t be here to collect a check anyway. But just by multiplying the population number by 600, we could up with a total expenditure of $205,320,897,600. That’s $205.3 BILLION of our own money that will be returned to us.
Missourians (our population of 6,282,690) would receive $3,769,614,000 of their own money back. The best thing that can be said for the deal is that it’s better than the Menard’s rebates that you only get if you buy something else later.
HOWEVER all of us might not get one of these checks if Congress falls for this scheme—your vigilant observer for example.
Hawley has told listeners to Steve Bannon’s podcast that Trump’s tariffs are “on track to raise over $150 billion this calendar year alone,” well short of the calculated total above. But that shortfall can be adjusted because Hawley says it won’t go to those who supported Trump’s favorite punching bag, Joe Biden. “You’d give it to our people,” he said. “The rich people don’t need it…All those Democrat donors of Wall Street, all these fund guys, who all hate the tariffs…We ought to give a portion back to our working class blue-collar voters who powered the Trump revolution, who got this president into office multiple times, and who are the backbone of this nation.” Multiple times meaning “two.”
Get out the hip boots, folks. It’s awfully deep in here.
I’m not saying I supported Joe Biden in 2024, thus becoming disqualified under this Hawley/Trump frequent flyer program. It’s just that you will never find my lip prints on the presidential ring.
Pro-Trump blue collar folks will be rewarded for their loyalty but anti-Trump blue collar workers won’t be rewarded? We suppose he knows how to separate a red blue-collar worker from a blue blue-collar worker. Perhaps he’ll use the people from ICE who are widely respected for their skills of discerning who gets hauled off to God knows where, largely based on physical appearance, to determine awardees.
This pinpointing of disloyal blue collar workers and keeping the Washington bureaucracy (what’s left of it, anyway) from sending checks to undeserving garbage men, grave diggers, and gas station operators should keep the total outlay below the amount we just computed.
And remember, this scheme just gives us back our own money that otherwise would be used for such things as building more wall in the Southwest where we are still waiting for the first check from Mexico that Trump promised would pay those costs, reimbursing this country for all those miles of fence.
This country is more than $30 TRILLION in debt. Where will it find the money for Hawley’s warm and fuzzy give-back plan? You and I will provide it by paying for Trump’s tariffs, as we have provided the money for the wall Mexico will pay for.
So far he hasn’t tied tariffs on Mexican products to the recovery of fence costs.
While thousands of his constituents have to deal with cutbacks in the food stamp program, the school meal programs, safety net reductions, cuts in disaster aid, attacks on disease prevention and control, and friends and relatives hauled away by masked hooligans in ICE outfits, he’s going to load up on a souvenir airplane, build a ballroom where even more of his friends can pay a lot of money to be in the same room with him, and gather as many other shiny tchotchkes that catch his eye. And he and Hawley hope to take our minds off of his meat-cleavering of programs that serve the people at large by giving us back a few hundred of the bucks it’s costing us to buy any of the myriad of things made somewhere else that they are making us pay more to buy.
Blaming President Biden for all of the broken promises or created problems of this administration as well as giant increases in the federal debt has become a misleading Republican whine that is beyond tiresome. Liars might figure, but figures don’t lie. And the figures show Trump stands balding head and shoulders above Biden and Obama when it comes to running up the national debt.
A study by consumeraffairs.com shows the Biden administration increased the national debt by $6.17 trillion while the first Trump administration drove it up by $8.18 trillion. (The Obama administration, ran it up by $8.34 trillion, but it took him eight years.) The calculations show Biden increased the national debt by 21.7 percent. Trump hiked it by 40.43% and some analysts say his Big Ugly Bill will add $2.5-3.8 trillion more.
Last we heard, Hawley hadn’t attracted any supporters, particularly others in his party, many of whom think the tariff revenues should be used to reduce the national debt or at least to retard its growth.
Next thing you know, Trump will be demanding the Nobel Prize for Economics—as he also wants it for Peace achieved through international bombing and national cruelty.
Let’s wait and see how Hawley figures out a way to get this dead bird to fly. Just remember, it’s our money that you and I might someday get back, not dollars paid by any foreign government or foreign manufacturer.
Six hundred dollars that we can use to pay tariff-inflated prices on other goods..
Maybe it’s not so different from Menard’s rebate system after all.