This is John Batcher, conversation with my colleague Professor Richard Epstein at the Hoover Institution teaches law at NYU in the University of Chicago about tariffs.

Tariffs recommended by President Donald Trump looking to return to the White House.

Richard is very careful about why tariffs don't work and who pays for the tariffs the additional

costs.

A tax. Who pays it? Here's Richard. Much more tonight.

Thank you.

Even at the great days, the early times when you had a lot of tariffs, they were largely destructive, and if you recall the

tariff issue was one of the issues that propelled the Civil War back in 1861.

So I don't think you want to have a particular romantic story about them.

I think what you have to say is to the extent that they protect domestic competition

from foreign competition, it will benefit domestic producers at the expense of domestic consumers and that was north and south so it was not even a good idea then

You're certainly right that there was an enormous amount of growth in the United States. I think it would be wrong to attribute it to the tariffs. I think generally speaking it was a large space, the new population, and a very small size of the federal government. That was a decisive feature. You're talking

about the time, even up until time about Roosevelt, we're apart from military

expenditures during war. The federal government, we say 3, 4, 5% of the total economy.

Now, by the between regulation and taxation,

it's probably as much as 30 or 35%,

because remember, regulation is just another form of tax

along with everything else that these characters do.

So it's basically has always been a losing strategy which is why it is that Trump seems to embrace it. Now he's not alone in this because the Biden administration basically took a page out of the Trump

playbook and imposed the elect the tariffs on the Chinese for purposes of retaliation,

often done under the name of national security which is not an

issue in any of these cases except where it is an issue on matters having to do with

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