What do you mean that I have to pay the import fee?
I placed an order on ebay. Apparently it is being shipped from overseas because I got this message: “Due to US Customs policies, you will need to pay import fees for this order to the shipping carrier prior to delivery.” What? Didn’t President Trump say that the country of manufacture had to pay the import fees and not us? Weren’t countries going to pay to have to export goods to us? Say it ain’t so. This notice reminded me that everyday my old friend Professor Don Boudreaux posts on the tariffs. Those most interested in that matter should go to his website https://cafehayek.com as I do daily. Don is a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal, often with my old economics tutor, Phil Gramm and to AEI today – see his “The Case for Economic Freedom” https://www.aei.org/multimedia/the-case-for-economic-freedom/. Here is his post – a letter to the “Tariff Man” on January 5th.
Mr. Donald J. Trump
President, Executive Branch
United States Government
1600 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20500
Mr. Trump:
On New Year’s Eve your office released a “Fact Sheet” stating that you “imposed reciprocal tariffs to take back America’s economic sovereignty, address nonreciprocal trade relationships that threaten our economic and national security, and to remedy the consequences of nonreciprocal trade.”
Two things.
First, by its nature, all trade is reciprocal. Each party gives something to the other party and receives in exchange something that each party values more highly. Therefore, your punitive taxes – a.k.a. tariffs – on Americans’ purchases of imports are aimed at correcting a problem that doesn’t exist.
Your only possible retort that would retain as much as a tenuous connection to logic would be to insist that foreigners regularly dupe us Americans into buying things that we don’t want to buy – that is, to insist that we Americans are incurably stupid at conducting our own economic affairs, while foreigners are so astonishingly clever that they routinely swindle us out of our own money. Do you, sir, really believe that your fellow Americans are generally the intellectual inferiors of foreigners?
Second, by obstructing each of your fellow Americans’ voluntary, peaceful trades with foreigners you diminish the economic sovereignty of each and every one of us. What (il)logic leads you to conclude that by obstructing – with your taxes on our purchases of imports – the economic sovereignty of 340 million Americans, you thereby “take back America’s economic sovereignty”?
Your tariffs do for us Americans the opposite of what you assert: they diminish our economic sovereignty and, in this sorry bargain, also make us poorer than we’d otherwise be.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030
haroldblackphd.com 
Did someone hold a gun to your head or otherwise force you to buy from overseas? If not you made the choice via economic freedom.
LikeLike
Now that’s an interesting comment.
LikeLike
Drummer, in most surveys, Americans complain about the cost of American items. But they buy anyway..
I will pay any price for Scottish salad dressing- which is the equivalent of pudding- if I can find it..
If I refused to pay a price for anything Scotland, would that drive down the price, in the free market? How much of the price is govt?..
I’ve negotiated in a Mexican grocery for candy I wanted bad. Seems the brown skin people understand capitalism. I – me- drove down the price.
LikeLike
I’m not yet 70 but I don’t recall anyone complaining that a price for a good or service was too cheap. Most people want as much cash as possible to spend on whatever catches their eye. When prices rise like they did under Biden, everyone in following years will reap the effect and lament for yesterday. Best thing to do is to steel oneself for the inevitable rise in price and work to prepare for it. A positive is the falling price of gasoline. That reduction in fuel cost should trickle trough the economy – indirectly also.
LikeLike
Government always targets, because government doesn’t recognize freedom until their campaigns..
My wife was a little shocked when she set her godchild in France, a pair of FREE earrings. Then she found out the girl had to pay either equivalent of $ $50 or $ 100 to get a free item. The $ amount would be determined by govt..
..my Scottish friend said YES- same here.
You have to lie on customs forms- and hope the pkg isn’t opened. My wife is honest, will not fake a customs form, and now sends banking services to cover cost. That doesn’t include postage…
Cross- pollination of economy is frowned upon..
BTW: Hal Hill wrote a love letter to Trump45. I wonder if he – and your good friend- got a reply..
Just because I like to align tariffs with your last Venezuelan essay, here’s a book review:
…”Then came the rise of progressivism and Republican presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, both of whom wanted to regulate big business because it was already subsidized and protected via tariffs, primarily by prior Republican-run governments. In foreign policy, Roosevelt “stole fair and square” what would become the Panama Canal Zone through armed coercion and added the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, which paved the way for US military intervention in Latin American countries if they did not do what the United States wanted.
—-review of ‘Eleven Presidents’
by Ivan Eland…”
LikeLike
Interesting that a gift would be subject to import duties. So now we have the Trump corollary to the Roosevelt corollary to the Monroe Doctrine?
LikeLike
With all due respect to your friend. He should return the payments from China, as he is doing serious reputational damage to his legacy. He should definitely not shop anywhere they are trying to pass a fee like this on to him. Find a different retailer.
Inflation continues to decline. The Economy is growing. Drug overdose deaths are beginning to drop significantly.
The tariffs are helping mitigate the diaster budget deficits that Biden left behind. Once enough spending cuts are codified. It will be time to reevaluate the tariff policy.
LikeLike
Sources, please.
LikeLike
https://www.drugtopics.com/view/opioid-overdose-deaths-fall-by-34-in-2025-ashp-midyear-2025
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/inflation-report-released-thursday-expected-show-slight-uptick/story?id=128480220
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/23/us-economy-grows-by-4point3percent-in-third-quarter-much-more-than-expected-delayed-report-shows.html
The tariffs don’t seem to be causing any of the problems the pundits have claimed…….and overdose deaths are declining
What is it going to take for everyone to agree these temporary tariffs are not the devil? And we can move on to more interesting discussions?
LikeLike
Although I have given up discussing this issue I encourage you to respond directly to Don with your comments. He answers every email and I know that he will enjoy responding to yours. You two could become pen pals. I look forward to reading your exchanges.
LikeLike
DDE Thank you for the link. I will also add that issues of drugs are an all- hands- on – deck struggle..
I was shocked to find that , after taking out my heart, I was in the hospital with Drs’ conscious effort to use only Tylenol for pain..
Barbara Kingsolver wrote a fictional book that was hurtful to all dealing with addictions. After some discussion, she decided to donate money to drug rehab in Pennington Gap VA – note my name!
A patient said drugs were easy to get- didn’t name China or MADURO once..
If it wasn’t drugs, it would be moonshine, which I’ve drank on the side of a VA mountain.
LikeLike
Actually Don is on solid ground with the facts to prove it. Read his blog and you’ll see. I know it is impossible to change your opinion so I have given up trying. But keep those comments coming.
LikeLike
Hello Dr. Black:
I read and keep all of your articles. They are very informative and help me to kind of understand economics. As for tariffs, I am unable to sort out the subject.
I constructed bird houses to sell at a craft fair. On every sale, the craft fair organizer required 10% of the sales price be paid to him. My price to the customer was $10.00. Therefore I owe the CFO $1.00. I was going to sell them for $9.00, but knowing I would have to pay the CFO 10%, I changed my sales price to $10.00. This is not analogous to a tariff, as the CFO is providing a sales venue and marketing for me, so it is a cost of doing business. The tariff however is an unrelated entity simply profiting off of my production, which I consider theft. Is this an accurate conclusion?
If accurate, I still see the justification for a tariff. For instance, my family could buy birdhouses from me or from the guy down the street. I would like to think my family would be loyal and buy mine, but the guy down the street sells his much cheaper because he makes his kids build them and doesn’t pay them anything. I guess I could have my kids build my bird houses and pay them nothing and we would be even, but I am not as ruthless as my neighbor. So everything being equal, I would still like to sell more bird houses than my neighbor, so instead of low expenses by using slave labor, I sell more bird houses because mine are higher quality and prettier. I have out-competed him but in an ethical way. Isn’t the tariff a way to equalize the cost between slave labor and union labor?
In the end, even if prices to the consumer are higher, isn’t creating incentive to produce goods in our country preferable to relying on foreign sources? Especially for technology and raw materials?
Went deer hunting for the first time in probably 20 years. Used my Wing Red Wing Hunter recurve with a Bear broadhead on a fiberglass arrow fletched with feathers. Went in the evening and stood on a fallen tree for two hours and shot an eight pointer just before dark. The whole thing was a blur. Must have been the nerves. Nothing like following a blood trail; my favorite part. Hunting, fishing, trapping and living close to the land makes the subject of tariffs a little less important, at least for me, maybe not our country.
Thank you for writing your articles. I especially like when you write about personal matters and hunting.
Sincerely,
Kevin Bramer
>
LikeLike
Mr Bramer, First off I envy you. Anyone who can shoot a recurve deserves my admiration. Then to walk into the woods and shoot an eight pointer! I have hunted all season and have seen no deer over 4 points and the season in Georgia ends Sunday with me only taking one nice doe on a Wicked Ridge RDX crossbow. As to tariffs, in the first instance where a service is performed that is no tariff. A tariff would be assessed if you sold your birdhouse to an importer in Canada and the importer had to pay the tariff to the Canadian government for importing it. That would most likely increase the price of the birdhouse to the Canadians but you would not receive any of the tariff assessed at the border. In the second instance if you build a better and more costly birdhouse than your neighbor then it would likely sell to a differentiated market at a higher price. That is analogous to producing a Mercedes versus a Kia Soul and since it is an upscale birdhouse there is little reason why you need protection. In your example if true there would be no high quality goods being sold because all the manufacturers would have been driven out of business by the cheap goods producers or they would be forced to only make cheap stuff. On your final point if prices are higher then consumer real income is lowered making them worse off. But if you do make a pretty fancy birdhouse I would gladly purchase one! Again thanks for an enjoyable comment. Keep them coming!
LikeLike