Polly Dogood

Upon the Price of Things

Wherein the Author recalls what her Grandpapa told Parliament about Duties, observes that a Tariff is only a Tax in a Travelling Coat, and asks a Congress which once struck Days out of the Calendar to strike a Vote onto the Record instead.

To the Readers of this Publick Blog,

On the 13th of February 1766 my Grandpapa finished being examined by the House of Commons, which had summoned him to explain why the Americans so disliked the Stamp Act. He was asked a great many Questions, and one of them was the Difference between a Tax and a Duty. His Answer was very plain. A Duty, he said, "is added to the first cost and other charges on the commodity, and, when it is offered for sale, makes a part of the price."

Makes a part of the Price. Grandpapa understood, as every Shopkeeper understands, that a Duty laid on Goods at the Wharf is paid at last by whoever buys them at the Counter.

I must make a Confession, as I always do about my Family. Grandpapa told the Commons that day that he had never heard any Objection to Parliament's laying Duties on Trade, and objected only to Taxes laid inside the Colonies. He did not yet see what his Countrymen would soon see: that a Duty is a Tax all the same, and that it matters very much who lays it. When Parliament put Duties on Glass, Paper, Paint, Lead and Tea in 1767, the Colonies saw it soon enough, and by the following Year had begun to agree among themselves to stop buying. And the Phrase that went round the World was not, as is often said, Mr. Otis's. It first appeared in a London Magazine in 1768, over a Speech by Lord Camden, who put it more plainly still: "taxation and representation are inseparable."

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Who holds the Purse

The Framers did not make Grandpapa's Mistake. They wrote that "The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises," and that all Bills for raising Revenue "shall originate in the House of Representatives." The first Tax the new Congress ever laid, in July of 1789, was a Tariff, voted by the People's Representatives and signed into Law.

Mr. Madison explained why, in the Federalist. The House, he wrote, holds "the purse," and "This power over the purse may, in fact, be regarded as the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people." Elsewhere he put it more bluntly: the Legislature "alone has access to the pockets of the people."

The Supreme Court remembered it this February. By Six to Three, it held that the President could not lay Tariffs by declaring an Emergency, and said of the Framers: "They did not vest any part of the taxing power in the Executive Branch." Those Tariffs ended four Days later, and some $166 billion collected under them is being paid back. It is being paid back to the Importers, who paid it at the Wharf. I have not yet had my Share for the Coffee, nor, I expect, have you. Last November the Administration lifted its Tariffs on Coffee, Beef, Bananas and Tea, which is a curious Thing to do with a Tax that was supposed to be paid by Foreigners.

The Laws Congress lent him

Do not suppose the Tariffs stopped. Only the Excuse for them changed. On the very Day of the Court's Ruling, the President found other Laws, and here is the Part of the Story that concerns Congress. Over many Years, Congress had lent the President Pieces of its taxing Power, each with its own Conditions, and it had never troubled to ask for them back.

Under one of them he laid a Surcharge of 10% on nearly everything we import, for the hundred and fifty Days that Law allows. When the Days ran out in July, he laid new Duties of 10% or 12.5% on the Goods of some sixty Nations under another. And to the Goods of Canada, our Neighbour and oldest Friend, he has applied a Tariff of 50% under Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, which is to say the Smoot-Hawley Act, which I had supposed was kept in a Museum as a Warning.

Congress has not voted on a single one of these. Not one of the Tariffs you are paying today has been put to a Vote of the People's Representatives.

A Tax for Friends

And a Tax laid by one Man can be lifted by one Man, for whomever he pleases. Last Friday, the 23rd of October, Senator Collins of Maine, who faces the Voters next Week, announced that Canadian Goods used by Maine's Blueberry, Potato, Apple and Seaweed Growers, their Boxes, Crates, Packing Bags and Cooling Equipment, would be spared the 50% Tariff. The Associated Press reported it as an Effort to help her Campaign. Within the Hour the White House published its Order, which by the Count of Canada's Global News lifts the Tariff from twenty-two Products and lays it on a hundred new ones. It takes Effect on the 30th of October, four Days before the Election.

I am glad for the Blueberry Growers of Maine. But let us call this by its Name. When a Ruler lifts a Tax to help a Friend win an Election, and lays it instead on somebody else's Neighbours, that is Corruption. It is the plain, old-fashioned Kind: the Power of the Government, which belongs to all of us, used to reward the Ruler's Friends. I wrote on Saturday that a Law which binds only when the President pleases is not a Law but a Favour. A Tax that can be switched off for a Friend's Election is not a Tax. It is Corruption, with a Customs House attached. Under the Constitution, a Tax is lifted by a Vote of Congress, for everyone at once, with Names on the Record.

How Congress kept from voting

I will be fair, as I try always to be. Congress has voted against the President's Tariffs. The Senate did so four Times last Year, with Republicans joining in, and this February the House voted Two Hundred and Nineteen to Two Hundred and Eleven to end the Emergency Tariffs on Canada. None of it ever became Law.

But the House did not get to that Vote easily. The Law allows any Member to force a Vote on ending an Emergency after a certain Number of Days. So last April the House, at its Leadership's Bidding, adopted a Rule declaring that "Each day during the period from April 9, 2025, through September 30, 2025 … shall not constitute a calendar day" for that Purpose. In September they extended it to the End of January.

In 1752 Parliament struck eleven Days out of September to put the Calendar right with the Heavens, and my Family lived through it. The present House struck out the better Part of ten Months so as not to have to vote on your Taxes. When at last, in February, it lost the Vote to strike out any more, its Members voted, and voted against the Tariffs. One wonders what they were so afraid of. The Speaker called the whole Exercise "fruitless" and "pointless." The President warned that any Republican who voted against Tariffs "will seriously suffer the consequences come Election time." Representative Bacon, a Republican, answered that "Article I of the Constitution places authority over taxes and tariffs with Congress for a reason." He is right, and he was one of six.

What it costs

The Tax Foundation reckons the Tariffs cost the average American Household about $1,000 last Year, and will cost about $820 this one. The Budget Lab at Yale puts it nearer $1,100 a Year. Economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that "nearly 90 percent" of the Burden fell on American Firms and Consumers. Our Tariffs are the highest in about eighty Years.

In Fairness again: most of this Year's Rise in Prices is in Petrol, for Reasons that deserve their own Letter. The Tariffs did their Work earlier. The Prices they raised have not come down, and nobody has offered you a Refund.

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Here is the plainer Version.

A Tariff is a Tax in a Travelling Coat. Grandpapa knew it in 1766: it is added to the Price, and you pay it at the Counter. The Constitution gives the Power to lay it to your Representatives, and to nobody else, so that every Tax you pay has a Name on the Roll beside it, and you know whom to thank or blame.

The present Congress lent that Power away, and the President has used it as Rulers always use Power that nobody checks: to tax whom he likes, and to spare whom he likes. That is Corruption, and a Congress that will not stop it is a Partner in it. When the House was asked to account for itself, it voted that Days were not Days. Grandpapa said a Man who disliked a Duty could refuse the Goods. You cannot refuse your Groceries. The only Refusal left to you is at the Polls.

On the 3rd of November, send to Washington a Congress that will vote on your Taxes, one Way or the other, with its Names on the Record, and that knows what Day it is.

P.S. The Commons asked Grandpapa what had been the Pride of the Americans. "To indulge in the fashions and manufactures of Great Britain," he said. And what was their Pride now? "To wear their old clothes over again, till they can make new ones." I have been wearing mine. They are very comfortable, and I recommend them to the House, which seems to have run short of new Ideas as well.