The President talked about tariffs today. He accurately described them as “the greatest.”

The United States government throughout much of the 19th century operated primarily off of tariffs. There wasn’t even an income tax until 1913. That’s how great tariffs are.

The people who say that tariffs will cause an economic calamity are fools. If tariffs are such a horrible thing, why is it that China and the European Union have used them so aggressively? If they were bad, these regions would be in economic ruin right now. The fact of the matter is that these tariffs protect their domestic industries.

It’s the lack of tariffs that have caused much of the economic problems in America. It resulted in good paying jobs being exported to third world countries.

And let’s look at China. They built their country into an economic power because of the tariffs they put on imported goods. It allowed them to turn their country into a manufacturing juggernaut. Of course, they were also helped with stupid American trade policies. They’ve been allowed to dump all their cheap chink products into our country with few if any barriers.

Sure, putting tariffs on imported goods will cause some price increases and temporary market disruptions. But the long term benefits far out weigh any short term problems. It also puts us in a position to negotiate fair trade deals with foreign countries.

But the best part about this is that it means we will manufacture more products in America which means more jobs for Americans.

Tariffs will help us bring back the idea of “Made in the USA” again. So yes, tariffs are awesome and the more of them are put into place the better.

The only reason not to implement tariffs is if you have a true free trade system with no barriers on either side.

And Trump is probably right, it seems doubtful that the EU will do this which shows that they are against a real free trade system.