Biden Could Lower Prices by Ending Trump's Tariffs

Rapidly rising prices have become a huge political liability for President Joe Biden and Democrats. They thought their massive $2 trillion American Rescue Plan would inflate the public’s appreciation for Democrats. Instead, exploding inflation has deflated voters’ pocketbooks—and Democratic hopes for November.
 
Just today the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced the Producer Price Index (PPI) rose 1 percent in January, or 9.7 percent for the past 12 months ending in January.*
 
And voters ARE NOT HAPPY!
 
As a result, the Biden administration has been frantically looking for ways to lower prices. Biden has even gone so far as to entreat fossil fuel producers—both here and abroad—to pump more crude oil and natural gas in the hope of lowering energy and gasoline prices.
 
So let us make a modest proposal: End the Trump tariffs.
 
President Donald Trump loved to unilaterally—and often haphazardly—slap tariffs on friends and foes alike.
 
A tariff is a tax the government imposes on its own people. Tariffs increase the price American industries and consumers pay for products.
 
When Trump imposed tariffs, it was American companies and individuals who paid that tax, not the foreign countries—a fact Trump never seemed to understand.
 
The Biden administration has generally left those tariffs in place, so Americans are paying more for some products than they need to.
 
As this table from the American Action Forum shows, that additional upper-bound cost in 2020 is estimated to be about $50 billion.



By eliminating most or all of those tariffs (i.e., taxes), the Biden administration would be taking concrete steps to lower prices in the United States. It might help mend some strained relations with many of our allies—and even China. And it would help restore the constitutional provision that it is Congress, not the president, that decides when to raise taxes.
 
 
* From Investopedia: “The producer price index (PPI), published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), is a group of indexes that calculates and represents the average movement in selling prices from domestic production over time. The PPI is different from the CPI in that it measures costs from the viewpoint of industries that make the products, whereas the CPI measures prices from the perspective of consumers.”