They rightly note that protectionism constitutes a sales tax which falls hardest on low-income Americans
A bit of a nitpick but no they don’t? They argue it is similar in many ways to a consumption tax, but consumption taxes are not the same as sales taxes. Sales taxes have unique difficulties around compliance which other types of consumption taxes like VAT do not have. Sales taxes are an unusually hard type of tax to enforce (because shops will increasingly under-report sales) leading to distortions in favour of less compliant businesses, but tariffs are unusually easy to enforce because the government controls the ports and airports. My recollection is economists generally think well-designed consumption taxes, like VAT, are unusually good taxes. The problem is that neither sales taxes nor tariffs are particularly good examples of consumption taxes.
A bit of a nitpick but no they don’t? They argue it is similar in many ways to a consumption tax, but consumption taxes are not the same as sales taxes. Sales taxes have unique difficulties around compliance which other types of consumption taxes like VAT do not have. Sales taxes are an unusually hard type of tax to enforce (because shops will increasingly under-report sales) leading to distortions in favour of less compliant businesses, but tariffs are unusually easy to enforce because the government controls the ports and airports. My recollection is economists generally think well-designed consumption taxes, like VAT, are unusually good taxes. The problem is that neither sales taxes nor tariffs are particularly good examples of consumption taxes.