Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
Two percent of working Americans get tips. If you are a waiter who gets tips, you get a tax cut, but if you are a dishwasher who doesn’t get tips, you don’t get a tax cut. If you are getting tips and stay within the bill’s 25k limit, you aren’t paying much taxes to begin with.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNjSrXnMY4Y
“One of the supposed goals of the Trump administration’s trade policies is to protect and promote American-made products.
Greg Shugar, who owns a business that does make things right here in America, has a hard time seeing it that way.
“I’m charging more and I’m making less,” says Shugar, owner of Beau Ties of Vermont, which manufactures neckties, socks, pocket squares, and other fashion accoutrements.
While the vast majority of American clothes and accessories are imported these days, Shugar’s company, which employs 18 people, is one of the few that are cutting and sewing those products here in the United States. He told Reason last week that the tariffs have not been a boost for his business. Quite the opposite, in fact, since his products depend on silk jacquard and other materials that are imported from overseas—mostly from China but also from Italy.
Silk jacquard, Shugar explained, is made “from a very specific type of looming machine where they weave silk and it creates more of a stiffer silk, which is what you wear on your ties.”
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Shugar’s business is a lot like many other American-based manufacturers. More than half the imports to the U.S. are raw materials, intermediate parts, or equipment—the stuff that manufacturing firms need to make things, including the silk jacquard that goes into Shugar’s ties—rather than finished goods. Tariffs are making those imports more expensive, which in turn makes manufacturing anything in the United States more expensive.”
https://reason.com/2025/07/08/the-only-winner-is-the-government-says-american-bow-tie-ceo-facing-higher-tariff-costs/
Repeated Republican presidents and Congresses have told us that tax cuts will pay for themselves, and they repeatedly have not paid for themselves. Tax cuts like these are budget busters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqVzMF3QOng
“If Trump’s goal here is to strike deals that will lower foreign barriers to American exports and deliver better trading conditions for American manufacturers (who rely on imports), then hiking tariffs on South Korea makes startlingly little sense.”
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“the new tariffs seem to violate an existing trade deal between the U.S. and South Korea. That deal, the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement, was signed in 2007 by President George W. Bush and implemented in 2012. Under the terms of the deal, about 95 percent of the goods traded between the two countries are imported tariff-free. Among other things, that deal put an end to high South Korean tariffs on American cars and light trucks, which has boosted American exports and U.S. auto manufacturing jobs.
On the whole, the deal has been good for both countries. Bilateral trade between the U.S. and South Korea expanded nearly 70 percent in the first 10 years that the deal was in place. As the Heritage Foundation noted in 2022, the deal was particularly good for American farmers (who saw exports to South Korea hit record highs) and for foreign investment in American industries (South Korean investment in the U.S. nearly tripled during the deal’s first decade in force).”
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“Trump himself signed a renegotiated version of that same trade deal in 2018. The so-called KORUS 2.0 rolled back some of the free trade provisions in the original deal—most notably, it limited exports of Korean steel to the U.S. and postponed a planned elimination of the U.S. tariff on imported light trucks.
Still, it was mostly “a minor tweak” to the previous deal, as the Cato Institute termed it at the time.
Trump called the reworked deal “fair and reciprocal” and said it was “a historic milestone in trade.”
Now, less than seven years later, he’s effectively torn up that deal. Or he’s pretending that it never existed (or he forgot about it).
So, here’s the question: What is the White House hoping to accomplish with this latest maneuver?
If the goal is to lower tariffs across the board, then KORUS already did that. If the goal is to increase American exports to foreign countries by getting them to lower their trade barriers, then KORUS has already done that too. If the goal is to allow Trump to renegotiate the supposedly flawed trade deals from previous generations of American leaders, then KORUS 2.0 did that.
And, of course, if the goal is to strike more deals with more countries—as the White House keeps claiming—then this seems to be a step in the wrong direction. What other leader will be willing to negotiate seriously with this administration, knowing full well that it does not respect the deals it reaches?”
https://reason.com/2025/07/07/with-new-25-percent-tariffs-trump-just-blew-up-his-own-trade-deal-with-south-korea/
“Special tax breaks for venture capitalists, Alaskan fisheries, spaceports, private schools, rum makers and others — together costing tens of billions of dollars — quietly caught a ride on Republicans’ sprawling domestic policy megabill.”
Pork pork pork. Where’s the tea party!?
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/04/from-rum-to-gun-silencers-tailored-tax-breaks-add-billions-to-megabill-00438962
“The sprawling measure — which at its core was really one big, beautiful tax extender — was never about those tax rates or Medicaid or the deficit. The underlying legislation was no bill at all, but a referendum on Trump. And that left congressional Republicans a binary choice that also had nothing to do with the policy therein: They could salute the president and vote yes and or vote no and risk their careers in a primary.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/07/04/republicans-megabill-vote-jonathan-martin-column-00439333
“Trump said the tariffs on Japan and South Korea would be separate from any “sectoral” tariffs that he imposes. That appears to refer to the duties that he has already imposed on autos, auto parts, steel and aluminum under Section 232 of the 1962 Trade Expansion Act, which gives the president broad authority to restrict imports to protect national security.”
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“Trump said he was imposing the duties to help reduce the “very persistent” trade deficits with the two countries — meaning they export more goods to the U.S. than they buy from the U.S. — which the president blamed on Japan and South Korea’s tariffs and other trade barriers.
However, most economists disagree with that analysis, saying that macroeconomic factors like relative savings rates play more of a role in driving the overall U.S. trade deficit.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/07/trump-threatens-japan-south-korea-new-tariffs-00441302
“For decades, Republicans have extolled the virtues of removing loopholes and carveouts from the tax code, arguing it would make the system fairer and more efficient, while allowing for lower overall tax rates.”
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“Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill is not an exercise in tax simplification.
Instead, it began with a push to extend the party’s 2017 tax cuts — which despite some streamlining also introduced some complexity — and piled more on top, in line with a slew of presidential campaign promises. Add in a heavy dose of congressional politics, and the result was a sprawling and quirky piece of legislation that is distinctively Trumpy: lower taxes and a bigger pile of tax breaks.”
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“several economists I spoke with worried it is the worst of all combinations: increasing the debt to pay for tax breaks that lead to neither growth nor other economically useful outcomes.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/07/05/trump-tax-cuts-megabill-republicans-00439787
“Tariffs will revert back to their April 2 rates on Aug. 1 for countries that fail to nail down new trade deals with the United States, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Sunday, just three days before the Trump administration’s initial July 9 deadline for tariffs to return.
Bessent told CNN’s “State of the Union” that the Trump administration would be sending out letters to 100 smaller countries “saying that if you don’t move things along, then on August 1st, you will boomerang back to your April 2nd tariff level.””
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/06/bessent-trump-tariffs-deadline-august-00440522
Joe Rogan takes on a variety of complex topics, including taxes, but doesn’t understand how marginal taxes work, despite commenting on taxes over the years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoWpmZ1u1AQ