As we were wrapping up this issue, the president-elect announced the creation of an “External Revenue Service” (ERS). It will, as he put it, demonstrating his idiosyncratic understanding of trade, “collect our Tariffs, Duties, and all Revenue that come from Foreign sources. We will begin charging those that make money off of us with Trade….” Almost no one aside from him and his circle of advisers thinks that foreigners, rather than US consumers, pay tariffs, but let’s set that aside for now. Instead, let’s look at tariffs over the long sweep of history. According to a useful factsheet from the Congressional Research Service, tariffs were an easy way to collect revenues in the early history of the country, which didn’t […]