Attachment – Trade Policy

Attachment –  Trade Policy

Consumption taxes could have a big impact on workers, industry and consumers. Enacting an I-VAT is far superior to a tariff. The more government costs are loaded onto an I-VAT the better. 

If the employer portion of Old Age and Survivors Insurance, as well as all of disability and hospital insurance are decoupled from income and credited equally and personal retirement accounts are not used,  there is no reason not to load them onto an I-VAT. This tax is zero rated at export and fully burdens imports.  

Seen another way, to not put as much taxation into VAT as possible is to enact an unconstitutional export tax. Adopting an I-VAT is superior to it’s weak sister, the Destination Based Cash Flow Tax that was contemplated for inclusion in the TCJA. It would have run afoul of WTO rules on taxing corporate income. I-VAT, which taxes both labor and profit, does not. 

The second tax applicable to trade is a Subtraction VAT or S-VAT. This tax is designed to benefit the families of workers through direct subsidies, such as an enlarged child tax credit, or indirect subsidies used by employers to provide health insurance or tuition reimbursement, even including direct medical care and elementary school tuition. As such, S-VAT cannot be border adjustable. Doing so would take away needed family benefits. As such, it is really part of compensation.  While we could run all compensation through the public sector.

The S-VAT could have a huge impact on long term trade policy, probably much more than trade treaties, if one of the deductions from the tax is purchase of employer voting stock (in equal dollar amounts for each worker).  Over a fairly short period of time, much of American industry, if not employee-owned outright  (and there are other policies to accelerate this, like ESOP conversion) will give workers enough of a share to greatly impact wages, management hiring and compensation and dealing with overseas subsidiaries and the supply chain – as well as impacting certain legal provisions that limit the fiduciary impact of management decision to improving short-term profitability (at least that is the excuse managers give for not privileging job retention).  

Employee-owners will find it in their own interest to give their overseas subsidiaries and their supply chain’s employees the same deal that they get as far as employee-ownership plus an equivalent standard of living.  The same pay is not necessary, currency markets will adjust once worker standards of living rise. 

Over time, ownership will change the economies of the nations we trade with, as working in employee-owned companies will become the market preference and force other firms to adopt similar policies (in much the same way that, even without a tax benefit for purchasing stock, employee-owned companies that become more democratic or even more socialistic, will force all other employers to adopt similar measures to compete for the best workers and professionals).

In the long run, trade will no longer be an issue.  Internal company dynamics will replace the need for trade agreements as capitalists lose the ability to pit the interest of one nation’s workers against the others.  This approach is also the most effective way to deal with the advance of robotics.  If the workers own the robots, wages are swapped for profits with the profits going where they will enhance consumption without such devices as a guaranteed income.