Paul Ryan: Republican Congress Won’t Raise Tariffs

Well, here we go:

“House Speaker Paul Ryan said Wednesday that Congress would not be raising taxes on companies that ship jobs over the border and sell their products in the United States.

Ryan said congressional Republicans would not rubber stamp the president-elect’s trade agenda and raise tariffs, as he’s repeatedly promised.

‘No, we’re not going to be raising tariffs,’ Ryan told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. …

Trump has been threatening ‘big’ border taxes on companies that defy his orders to keep jobs in the U.S.

The president-elect has said on numerous occasions that companies ignoring his demands will pay a steep price – a 35 percent tariff.

‘The U.S. is going to substantialy reduce taxes and regulations on businesses, but any business that leaves our country for another country, fires its employees, builds a new factory or plant in the other country, and then thinks it will sell its product back into the U.S without retribution or consequence, is WRONG!

‘There will be a tax on our soon to be strong border of 35% for these companies,’ Trump said in a series of Dec. 4 tweets. …”

Paul Ryan is excited about pushing his agenda through Congress and having Trump sign off on it: repealing Obamacare, tax cuts, the REINS Act, deregulating Wall Street, condemning the UN for being too critical of Israel and working with John McCain and Lindsey Graham to pass new sanctions on Russia. Congressional Republicans have already plunged head first into healthcare which is their top legislative priority.

Remember all the talk during the campaign about rotten free-trade deals, globalists who were destroying the working class and how tariffs which would stop offshoring? Paul Ryan plans … to do nothing about any of that. Instead, the solution is to pass a bunch of things which will make the US Chamber of Commerce very happy, which will do absolutely nothing to stop the flow of jobs to low-tax, low-wage, low-regulation Third World countries. There’s nothing the Paul Ryan Congress can do to reach parity with China or other Third World countries in a global race to the bottom in the labor market.

Note: Allahpundit is expecting fireworks.