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[quote user="DwightBranch"] <blockquote> <div><img src="/TRCCS/Themes/trc/images/icon-quote.gif" /> Bucyrus:</div> <div></div>   <blockquote> <div><img src="/TRCCS/Themes/trc/images/icon-quote.gif" /> DwightBranch:</div> <div>Tariffs have a much more nuanced effect on an economy than you would make them out to be. In the case of agriculture it will actually help the Europeans because they will be able to cut their price supports while maintaining a price at which French, German etc. farmers can compete. Anyone who thinks that tariffs are always a loss for an economy had better not look very closely at Taiwan or South Korea.</div> </blockquote>   Say an eco tariff prices their imports from us out of their market.  So they substitute to another source of imports, but at a higher price than what we had been charging them before the eco tariff.    If that higher priced import is an economic advantage to them, as you suggest in your nuanced explanation, then why would they have not just gone ahead and raised their import cost already by adding their own tarriff in order to reap that economic benefit that you cite in your nuanced explanation? <div style="clear:both;"></div>   </blockquote>  In the same way American greenhouse gas production is considered unacceptable to Europeans. Will halting the import of things from the US, using those objectionable methods, likely increase prices in Europe? Undoubtedly. But they will say that it only puts the price back where it should be if one uses socially acceptable methods of production, and that willingness to destroy the environment everyone shares cannot be a competitive advantage.[/quote] It sounds like you are changing your nuanced explanation from our trading partners benefiting from the ripple cost increase due to eco tariffs on their imports from us; to them not benefiting, but willing to pay the higher price for the environmental cause.   <o:p></o:p> Your point about socially acceptable methods of production requires accepting the stark terms of your premise, which is that we either do all this redistribution or draconian cuts in consumption and manufacturing; or we destroy the environment.  I don’t buy that premise.   <o:p></o:p> You cite the example of Americans pettily refusing to give up driving pickup trucks as basic transportation as an example of unreasonable belligerence of the American people in refusing to face the climate problem you believe in.  I would say that the actual remedy to the problem, as the advocates themselves have quantified it, would require far more sacrifice than even the advocates would be willing to give.  Giving up pickup trucks and driving little eco cars will not even make a measurable dent in the problem.   <o:p></o:p> But at lease we have broadened the discussion here to include all of the reasons for the decline of coal.
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