Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, told Newsmax on Saturday that he agrees with the controversial viewpoint that tariffs are taxes, but he also said that they are useful tools when used strategically to negotiate better trade agreements with other countries.
"Tariffs are taxes," Norquist said on "Wake Up America Weekend." "They're exactly like taxes. They're the taxes we funded the country with. Back when we were at 3% of GDP, the federal government was very small. It was largely funded with tariffs, taxes."
At the same time, tariffs can be used strategically when "you have a bad actor like China," said Norquist.
"The president went to Canada and to Europe, which had set up a tax designed to hit American large, successful tech companies and to basically loot American tax companies and said, 'You've got to get rid of that tax. If it isn't against the trade rules, it should be,'" he continued.
The trade rules, he added, were written while the United States was "being super generous to everybody else and not looking out after its own interests as perhaps it should have," Norquist added. "So resetting some of those is a very, very good idea."
But, he reiterated, "tariffs are taxes. We get in trouble when we try, if we try, and suggest they're not. They raise money from people, not voluntarily tax them."
It also appears, Norquist said, that President Donald Trump succeeded by using tariffs to get European countries to knock off their taxes on targeted U.S. businesses.
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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