Dear editor,

Is free trade a free lunch? There is no free lunch in economics. One way or another, everything comes with a price. Free trade dogmatists have always claimed that tariffs are always paid by the consumer and eliminating tariffs is a way to get products cheaper than we can make them ourselves. But who gets stuck with the tax bill if no tariffs are applied? Does that lost revenue equate to government spending reduced by the amount of the lost tariff? Or does the tariff get shifted onto somebody else in the form of another tax?

Free trade apologists never ask these questions and because our corporate media along with our school textbook publishers never allow this information to be heard nor read, the public, starting at a very young age is brainwashed in the free trade god. The truth is the tariff never goes away; it comes back in another form, and you are the one who pays for it.

Before 1913 this nation had no income tax. We didn't need one because we made our foreign trading adversaries pay for a large part of our government through tariffs. From 1869 to 1900, tariffs provided 58% of all federal revenues. The national debt was reduced by two-thirds; by 1900 it was less than 7% of our gross national product (GNP). From 1869 to 1900, our GNP quadrupled. Between 1870 and 1900, commodity prices fell 58%. In fact, many examples of U.S. tariffs applied to British goods such as steel rail, found the British lowering their prices attempting to preserve their U.S. market share, so the claim that tariffs are always passed on to the consumer is a historical lie. Another historical fact is that once the American manufacturer was destroyed by foreign competition thru trade agreements, those same nations were free to price fix our entire economy. Google search “Japan price fixing” and see what history is deleted from every textbook and broadcast media outlet I've ever seen.

Since World War II and the constant reduction of our tariffs, our tariff revenues have plummeted to only 2% of federal revenues while our income tax, introduced in 1913, is now over 45% and our national debt is over 120% of GDP. Corporate taxes have fallen from 35% in 1945 to 6.5% of federal revenues in 2024. You get stuck paying for the interest on that national debt, $870 billion worth, or $2,640 for every man, woman and child in America. You will be held responsible for the national debt of $34 trillion; $93,500 for every man, woman and child. Beginning in 1913 and the Federal Reserve Act, Congress abdicated its authority over money creation to the private banking industry and forced our federal government —and we the people — to perpetual debt to them as they have the monopoly on creating money out of thin air and use this to fuel these trade deficits. Corporations now use free trade to blackmail states and municipalities into tax breaks with threats of moving offshore and bringing their goods back into the U.S. essentially tax free. Free trade is corporate welfare, and you pay the bill. This is why our corporate media —  including NPR —  censors this information from all of our public airwaves. The FCC issues licenses for our public airwaves to corporations, apparently under the condition that the corporations use our public airwaves to brainwash the American public into supporting corporate welfare.

Free trade also destroys our national economic diversity. As industry after industry gets sent overseas in our mass economic extinction, the displaced labor goes into a shrinking choice of labor markets. Supply and demand force those wages down while corporate CEO's make a killing. The CEO to labor ratio was around 20 to one in the 1960s. Today, the S&P 500 CEO/labor pay ratio is 230 to one. Non-farm, private sector union membership, at 35% in 1954, has fallen to 6% today, a level not seen since 1934. Consumer debt is now an all-time record $17.7 trillion as Americans turn to credit cards to offset their shrinking paychecks to purchase, not only their own output, but the output of foreign nations. Corporations have used free trade to break the back of the labor movement and enrich themselves to robber baron proportions and bury the American worker in debt.

Free trade has become the most expensive economic policy ever rammed down the throats of the American worker, courtesy of corporate America that owns our media, textbook publishers and government. It is setting the stage for the worst economic collapse in world history. We have been on the receiving end of a trade war that has lasted since WWII and it is time we started to fight back with taxing imports and corporations instead of taxing Americans into bankruptcy. We pay for the most expensive military on planet earth to defend planet earth, yet planet earth does not want to pay us for that defense. Their tax bill is 80 years past due.

-Steve O'Connor, Rochelle