Word: tariff
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Overturning the unanimous recommendation of the U.S. Tariff Commission, President Eisenhower last week rejected a plea by the New England fishing industry that he raise the tariff on groundfish fillets (i.e., boneless cuts stripped from pollock, cod, haddock, other bottom fish) and thus protect beleaguered U.S. ground fishermen against further imports (now 128 million Ibs. -annually, three times higher than in 1945), chiefly from Canada, Iceland and Norway. While fully aware of the domestic problem, explained the President, "I am ... reluctant to impose a barrier to our trade with friendly nations"-and especially with nations whose "economic strength...
...Ferre's party wants the island to ask Congress for statehood-which would give Puerto Ricans the vote in U.S. elections, but would subject them to the income tax. Munoz Marin sticks by his self-designed commonwealth status, under which Puerto Rico has substantial home rule along with tariff-free access to the U.S. mainland market, plus the common citizenship with the U.S. that lets the island's unemployed migrate freely. The majority of Puerto Ricans seem to like the commonwealth plan, and those who do not are split between Ferre's Statehood Party and the diehard...
...Tariffs only encourage sliding, inefficient manufacturers to continue in uneconomic industries that require federal protection, says the study. In effect, they are subsidized by consumers. In the mass-production industries, where U.S. wages are far above world scales, Bidwell found that the U.S. worker usually so outproduces low-paid foreign workers that most tariffs and other import restrictions can be safely eliminated. Even in handwork industries, where the cost of labor makes up a large share of the product cost, he concluded that the tariff does little more than bail out the marginal producer...
...china-tableware industry, Bidwell noted, labor is 60% of the wholesale price of the final product. Long protected by a high tariff, this industry never got even a 5% toehold in the domestic market until World War II blocked imports. Now it demands continuing protection to keep output at wartime levels...
Defense Dogma. What about the industry that insists that it is vital to national defense? The watch manufacturers won tariff increases up to 50% in 1954 on the argument that the U.S. has to maintain at least 4,000 watchmakers to turn out military timing devices in case of war. Yet Bidwell found that domestic production of sensitive jeweled watches continued to slump even after the tariff rise, and "it is doubtful whether the present level of import duties will guarantee that watches will be produced at a level which defense authorities would consider adequate." In any case, he said...