Bob Murphy

The government levies a tax on cigarettes.

Who pays it, the smoker or the tobacco companies?

It has to do with the elasticity.

There's not just an answer.

It depends.

And so likewise, the U.S.

is a huge market for foreign goods.

And so because of that, you've got to look at the elasticity.

So in general, a tariff gets – the burden is borne both by the foreigners and the domestic consumers, and it depends on the case-by-case basis.

Yeah, well, yeah, and a few other people that were in the Trump orbit who were saying things like supply side guys, and that was the point they were making.

They were saying, yeah, yeah, of course, other things equal.

Tariffs are taxes, and we're against taxes, but all these, you had lots of progressive Democrats all of a sudden

becoming avid free traders, you know, like Nancy Pelosi, all of a sudden, you know, sleeps with Bastiat by her bedside.

And it's like, come on, this is obviously political.

And the issue is that, you know, 90% of what people were saying about why tariffs were bad would also be true of income taxes, right?

So that was more of the issue, which is like, be consistent about it.

Yeah, again, I'm not pro-tariff in that sense, but the idea that tariffs, like that the people pushing tariffs are, you know, particularly economically ignorant, whereas all the other taxes make perfect sense.

That's crazy.

Well, sure.

So what's interesting is just unstable coins, we sort of take it for granted and what a big market they have, like you say, with Tether and others.