Bob Murphy

If you coupled all those together, that would make a lot of economic sense.

So it's true, if you hold everything else constant and just raise tariffs, then yeah, that's just an extra tax, and that interferes with global commerce or whatever, and that per se is not quote good for the economy.

But if it is done in conjunction with all these other pro-growth measures, it could make sense.

I mean, just for one reason,

In general, economists think that sales taxes are more economically efficient than income taxes, right?

That if you're taxing consumption, that doesn't distort things as much as if you tax income, okay?

So just on that narrow point, if you shift away from taxing income and shift to just, you know, taxing goods as they come in, that is a point in its favor.

And also there's the privacy element.

that an income tax besides being economically destructive means everybody has to send records to the IRS about all their dealings.

And so if you could get to a system where you didn't use income taxes, that would be wonderful.

So I think that's partly why historically when the US was just funded mainly through customs duties and such, we had such great growth.

But the problem is you can't raise that much revenue from just taxing imports.

And so given how much the government spends,

tariffs alone wouldn't do it.

So I think there is that element involved.

And then, yeah, the point, this is the last thing I'll say here in response to your question.

I think a lot of the critics who were saying, oh, no, it's not foreigners who pay tariffs.

It's always the consumer.

That was always overblown.

Like just in general, in economic, you know, in a standard introductory class, if you teach