The Commerce Department now has 120 people working full-time deciding which businesses are exempt from tariffs (That is a bad thing)

Tariffs are taxes. They cost consumers and they cost companies. When one company is exempted and another is forced to suffer a tariff the crony element bleeds in. This is what we are seeing now. The longer this goes on the more strange (if not unintended) consequences we will see.

Business needs as level a playing field as possible. The state should not be tilting the pitch of battle.

(From Reason)

Applications for exemptions that have been denied usually come back with no explanation of why they were not accepted. Rep. Jackie Walorski (R–Ind.), whose office has conducted a review of the waiver applications granted and denied by the Commerce Department, found last month that not a single application has been accepted if U.S. Steel or another domestic steelmaker had objected to its granting.

Click here for the article.

http://www.againstcronycapitalism.org/