特朗普提议征收高额关税以解决美国问题的观点：
前总统、现任共和党候选人特朗普认为，对外国产品入境美国征收大规模的新关税是一个普适性的解决方案。他坚持认为，这种措施——即进口税——能创建更多的工厂岗位，缩小联邦赤字，降低食品价格，并允许政府补贴幼儿教育。
特朗普甚至声称，关税还有助于世界和平。在密歇根州弗林特市的演讲中，他曾这样说道：“关税是人类历史上最伟大的发明。”
当总统时，特朗普以大规模征收关税作为手段，目标包括太阳能板、钢铁、铝制品以及中国几乎所有的进口商品。他自豪地称自己为“关税先生”。
最近，特朗普的提议更加激进：他计划对中国商品征收高达60%的关税，并对所有美国进口的商品征税20%，甚至在与中国贸易争端中，誓言对农机制造商约翰·迪尔公司将部分生产转移到墨西哥的行为进行报复——将该公司出口回美国的产品税率为200%。此外，他威胁对从墨西哥进口的商品征收100%的关税，这可能使与加拿大和墨西哥达成的交易协议破裂。
主流经济学家普遍怀疑对贸易战的看法，认为关税是政府效率不高的财政手段，尤其反对特朗普最新的关税提议。近期彼得森国际经济研究所的一项报告表明，在中国等目标国家采取反制措施的情况下，特朗普的主要关税政策将到2026年使美国经济减少1.5%的增长，并使得通货膨胀在第二年比预期高出2个百分点。
副总统卡玛拉·哈里斯已经对特朗普的关税威胁表示不以为然。她的竞选团队引用了研究数据，表明特朗普全面征收的20%关税会使一个典型家庭每年增加近4000美元的支出。
尽管如此，拜登-哈里斯政府也表现出了对关税的偏爱。他们保留了特朗普对中国价值3600亿美元商品加征的关税，并进一步加征100%关税针对中国电动汽车进口产品。近期美国逐渐放弃二战后促进全球自由贸易和降低关税的角色，这一转变是对制造业岗位流失的响应，归咎于不受限制的国际贸易以及日益积极的中国经济。
关税通常按照买家支付给国外卖家的价格百分比收取。在美国有328个港口入口处由海关和边境保护局征收这些费用。
关税税率范围广泛，从乘客汽车（2.5%）到高尔夫鞋（6%），不同的国家根据与美国的贸易协议可能有不同的税率水平。例如，由于特朗普制定的美墨加协定的原因，大多数商品在美国、墨西哥和加拿大之间无需支付关税。
特朗普坚信关税由外国支付，事实并非如此，实际上，缴纳关税的是进口商——主要是美国公司，所有收入归入美国财政部。这些公司在转嫁给消费者后将成本提升为更高的价格，这就是经济学家解释说最终承担关税成本的消费者通常是谁。
然而，关税也可能损害其他国家，使产品更昂贵且在国际市场更难销售。上海复旦大学的一位经济学者杨周在他的研究中发现，特朗普对中国商品加征的关税对中国经济造成了超过美国三倍的影响。
通过提高进口成本，关税能保护本土制造业，并可能惩罚执行不公正贸易行为的外国国家，例如补贴出口商或以低于市场价倾销产品。在1913年联邦所得税建立之前，关税一直是政府主要的收入来源之一，在1790年至1860年间，关税占联邦总收入的90%。
随着全球贸易在二战后增长，关税逐渐失宠，政府需要更大的收入渠道来维持运营。今年财政年度结束时，政府预计将从关税和费用中获得814亿美元的收入，而个人所得税和社保以及医疗保障税预期为国家贡献了2.5万亿美元及1.7万亿美元。
尽管如此，特朗普希望实施类似于19世纪的预算政策。他辩称，对农业进口征收关税能通过协助美国农民降低食品价格。事实上，对外国食品产品的关税几乎肯定会导致杂货价格上涨，因为减少了消费者的选项，并为本地生产者增加了竞争压力。
关税还可能用于针对与贸易无关的问题施加压力。例如，在2019年，特朗普利用关税威胁作为杠杆，说服墨西哥打击途经该国前往美国的中美洲移民浪潮。
甚至特朗普还将关税视为预防战争的手段：“我只需要打一个电话。”在北卡罗来纳州的一场集会上他说，“如果另一个国家试图发动战争，我会提出警告：我们将对其征收100%的关税。这时，那个国家的总统、总理或独裁者就会对我说：‘先生，我们不会去战争’。”
关税增加进口成本，影响企业和消费者依赖的行业，并很可能引起报复行动。
欧洲联盟就曾反击特朗普对钢铁和铝的关税，通过对美国产品征税作为回击，例如威士忌到哈雷·戴维森摩托车等。同样地，中国响应特朗普贸易战时对美国商品施加了关税，包括大豆、猪肉等，旨在伤害支持他的农民群体。
由麻省理工学院、苏黎世大学、哈佛和世界银行经济学家的研究表明，特朗普的关税未能恢复美国内陆地区的就业岗位。研究发现：“这些关税既没有提高也未降低本应受保护工作的美国就业。”以进口钢铁为例，虽然2018年特朗普征收了进口税，但美国钢铁厂的岗位数量几乎没有变化：他们仍然保持在约14万个左右。相比之下，沃尔玛在美国有近160万名员工。
更糟糕的是，中国和其他国家对美国商品施加报复性关税产生的影响主要体现在负面影响上，尤其是农民群体。政府补贴仅部分抵消了特朗普给予农民的帮助。特朗普的关税也损害了依赖特定进口的公司。
尽管特朗普的贸易战政策未能在经济层面取得成功，但在政治层面却取得了成果。研究发现，对进口关税最敏感地区（工业中西部和制造业密集的南方各州）对特朗普及其共和党参议员的支持度有所上升。
这表明，虽然关税可能无法从根本上解决美国的问题，但它们能够通过政策手段引发公众情绪，并在短期内获得民意支持。
新闻来源：www.abcnews.go.com
原文地址：Trump favors huge new tariffs. What are they, and how do they work?
新闻日期：2024-09-26
原文摘要：
Donald Trump has identified what he sees as an all-purpose fix for what ails America: Slap huge new tariffs on foreign goods entering the United States. The former president and current Republican nominee asserts that tariffs — basically import taxes — will create more factory jobs, shrink the federal deficit, lower food prices and allow the government to subsidize childcare. He even says tariffs can promote world peace. “Tariffs are the greatest thing ever invented,’’ Trump said this month in Flint, Michigan. As president, Trump imposed tariffs with a flourish — targeting imported solar panels, steel, aluminum and pretty much everything from China. “Tariff Man," he called himself. This time, he's gone much further: He has proposed a 60% tariff on goods from China — and a tariff of up to 20% on everything else the United States imports. This week, he raised the ante still higher. To punish the machinery manufacturer John Deere for its plans to move some production to Mexico, Trump vowed to tax anything Deere tried to export back into the United States — at 200%. And he threatened to hit Mexican-made goods with 100% tariffs, a move that would risk blowing up a trade deal that Trump's own administration negotiated with Canada and Mexico. Mainstream economists are generally skeptical of tariffs, considering them a mostly inefficient way for governments to raise money and promote prosperity. They are especially alarmed by Trump’s latest proposed tariffs. This week, a report from the Peterson Institute for International Economics concluded that Trump’s main tariff proposals – assuming that the targeted countries retaliated with their own tariffs — would slash more than a percentage point off the U.S. economy by 2026 and make inflation 2 percentage points higher next year than it otherwise would have been. Vice President Kamala Harris has dismissed Trump’s tariff threats as unserious. Her campaign has cited a report that found that Trump’s 20% universal tariff would cost a typical family nearly $4,000 a year. But the Biden-Harris administration itself has a taste for tariffs. It retained the taxes Trump imposed on $360 billion in Chinese goods. And it imposed a 100% tariff on Chinese electric vehicles. Indeed, the United States in recent years has gradually retreated from its post-World War II role of promoting global free trade and lower tariffs. That shift has been a response to the loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs, widely attributed to unfettered tree trade and an increasingly aggressive China. They are typically charged as a percentage of the price a buyer pays a foreign seller. In the United States, tariffs are collected by Customs and Border Protection agents at 328 ports of entry across the country. The tariff rates range from passenger cars (2.5%) to golf shoes (6%). Tariffs can be lower for countries with which the United States has trade agreements. For example, most goods can move among the United States, Mexico and Canada tariff-free because of Trump’s US-Mexico-Canada trade agreement. Trump insists that tariffs are paid for by foreign countries. In fact, its is importers — American companies — that pay tariffs, and the money goes to U.S. Treasury. Those companies, in turn, typically pass their higher costs on to their customers in the form of higher prices. That's why economists say consumers usually end up footing the bill for tariffs. Still, tariffs can hurt foreign countries by making their products pricier and harder to sell abroad. Yang Zhou, an economist at Shanghai’s Fudan University, concluded in a study that Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods inflicted more than three times as much damage to the Chinese economy as they did to the U.S. economy By raising the price of imports, tariffs can protect home-grown manufacturers. They may also serve to punish foreign countries for committing unfair trade practices, like subsidizing their exporters or dumping products at unfairly low prices. Before the federal income tax was established in 1913, tariffs were a major revenue driver for the government. From 1790 to 1860, tariffs accounted for 90% of federal revenue, according to Douglas Irwin, a Dartmouth College economist who has studied the history of trade policy. Tariffs fell out of favor as global trade grew after World War II. The government needed vastly bigger revenue streams to finance its operations. In the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, the government is expected to collect $81.4 billion in tariffs and fees. That's a trifle next to the $2.5 trillion that's expected to come from individual income taxes and the $1.7 trillion from Social Security and Medicare taxes. Still, Trump wants to enact a budget policy that resembles what was in place in the 19th century. He has argued that tariffs on farm imports could lower food prices by aiding America’s farmers. In fact, tariffs on imported food products would almost certainly send grocery prices up by reducing choices for consumers and competition for American producers. Tariffs can also be used to pressure other countries on issues that may or may not be related to trade. In 2019, for example, Trump used the threat of tariffs as leverage to persuade Mexico to crack down on waves of Central American migrants crossing Mexican territory on their way to the United States. Trump even sees tariffs as a way to prevent wars. “I can do it with a phone call,’’ he said at an August rally in North Carolina. If another country tries to start a war, he said he’d issue a threat: “We’re going to charge you 100% tariffs. And all of a sudden, the president or prime minister or dictator or whoever the hell is running the country says to me, ‘Sir, we won’t go to war.’ ” Tariffs raise costs for companies and consumers that rely on imports. They're also likely to provoke retaliation. The European Union, for example, punched back against Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum by taxing U.S. products, from bourbon to Harley-Davidson motorcycles. Likewise, China responded to Trump’s trade war by slapping tariffs on American goods, including soybeans and pork in a calculated drive to hurt his supporters in farm country. A study by economists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Zurich, Harvard and the World Bank concluded that Trump’s tariffs failed to restore jobs to the American heartland. The tariffs “neither raised nor lowered U.S. employment’’ where they were supposed to protect jobs, the study found. Despite Trump’s 2018 taxes on imported steel, for example, the number of jobs at U.S. steel plants barely budged: They remained right around 140,000. By comparison, Walmart alone employs 1.6 million people in the United States. Worse, the retaliatory taxes imposed by China and other nations on U.S. goods had “negative employment impacts,’’ especially for farmers, the study found. These retaliatory tariffs were only partly offset by billions in government aid that Trump doled out to farmers. The Trump tariffs also damaged companies that relied on targeted imports. If Trump’s trade war fizzled as policy, though, it succeeded as politics. The study found that support for Trump and Republican congressional candidates rose in areas most exposed to the import tariffs — the industrial Midwest and manufacturing-heavy Southern states like North Carolina and Tennessee.
