Customs tariff

“ In arriving at the dutiable value of an import, Customs officials are bound by the Tariff Act, which lays down the rules under which they calculate the true value of an article. This system of appraisal is complex and varies from category to category. Congress has proclaimed that duty on certain items shall be fixed on the foreign value—that is, the selling price in the country of production. Some items are appraised on their export value—the price which the exporter pays for them. ”

“ We may note, however, in passing that § 1 of the Revised Statutes, 1 U.S.C. § 1, 1 U.S.C.A. § 1, provides that 'words importing the singular number may extend and beapplied to several persons or things.' Beyond that is the fact that we are construing a provision of a tariff act designed, as we have said, to value imports for customs purposes by means of the buying rate of the invoice currency. The use of the singular is not inappropriate since there is a buying rate for the foreign exchange used to purchase each separate import. ”

“ Hence in order to develop foreign and home trade, the Government must do away with likin, which will bring back business prosperity, and in time the same will enable the Government to obtain new sources of revenues.
"From the above-mentioned considerations, the Government can hardly develop and encourage trade without the abolition of likin. By treaty with Great Britain, America and Japan, the Government can increase the rate of Customs tariff to cover losses due to the abolition of likin. ”

“ We cannot doubt, without impugning their integrity, that if free to act upon their convictions they would so revise our laws as to lay the burden of the customs revenue upon articles that are not produced in this country, and to place upon the free list all competing foreign products. I do not stop to refute this theory as to the effect of our tariff duties. Those who advance it are students of maxims and not of the markets. They may be safely allowed to call their project "Tariff Reform," if the people understand that in the end the argument compels free trade in all competing products. ”

“ Resort is made to tariffs, or duties on imports, partly to secure revenue, partly to affect the course of industry within a country. Strictly speaking, these two objects are inconsistent with each other; since a customs duty, in so far as it causes a domestic industry rather than a foreign to supply the market, ceases to be a source of revenue. ”

“ The American, the Spaniard, the Porto Rican, are treated alike. The basis of the customs laws is not ownership, but (1) the geographical origin of the shipment, and (2) the nature of the goods. The duty is imposed against merchandise, not upon the importer. "The Government contends, therefore, that in view of the fact that tariff laws are 'in rem,' there is no principle of justice, much less of constitutional restriction, which forbids Congress from taxing in this way the merchandise of outlying possessions of the United States when brought into the ports of the Union. ”

“ Nations no longer accord equal tariff treatment to all other nations irrespective of the treatment from them received. Stich a flexible power at the command of the Executive would serve to moderate any unfavorable tendencies on the part of those countries from which the importations into the United States are substantially confined to articles on the free list as well as of the countries which find a lucrative market in the United States for their products under existing customs rates. ”

“ The commercial and industrial enterprises of the country can only thrive after likin is abolished and only then can new sources of revenue be obtained. This measure will form the fundamental factor of our industrial and economical development. But one thing to which we should like to call the special attention of the Government is the procedure to be adopted to negotiate with the Foreign countries respecting the adoption of this measure. The first step in this connection should be the increase of the 351 present Customs tariff to the actual five per cent ad valorem rate. ”

“ Those who have advocated a protective tariff can well afford to have their disastrous forecasts of a change of policy disappointed. If a system of customs duties can be framed that will set the idle wheels and looms of Europe in motion and crowd our warehouses with foreign-made goods and at the same time keep our own mills busy; that will give us an increased participation in the "markets of the world" of greater value than the home market we surrender ”

“ We shall consider three groups of topics: the reform of the general tariff; the repeal of the corn laws, protecting agricultural products, especially wheat; and the repeal of the navigation laws, protecting shipping.
England entered the nineteenth century with a cumbrous mass of tariff regulations inherited from the past, from which only the worst excesses had been pruned by statesmen like Walpole and Pitt. Customs laws had accumulated for 500 years to the amount of 1,500 statutes, “often confused, often contradictory, sometimes unintelligible.” ”

“ It is objected, that the effect of the encouragement of home manufactures, by the proposed tariff, will be, to diminish the revenue from the customs. The amount of the revenue from that source will depend upon the amount of importations, and the measure of these will be the value of the exports from this country. The quantity of the exportable produce will depend upon the foreign demand ”

“ We raise about £20,000,000 of our annual revenue by means of customs' duties on the foreign commodities which we import, and this fact is sometimes adduced by the advocates for protection, without any explanation, leaving their readers to infer that ours is not, as it really is, a free-trade tariff. ”

“ In order to provide generally for the modifications in the rules for determining whether goods imported into the customs territory of the United States are eligible for preferential tariff treatment under the CAFTA-DR, to provide preferential tariff treatment for certain other goods under the CAFTA-DR, and to make technical and conforming changes in the general notes to the HTS, the HTS is modified as set forth in Annex II of this proclamation. ”

“ That act regulated commerce with foreign nations, and Porto Rico had ceased to be within that category; nor could territory be foreign and domestic at the same time.
Among other things it was there said: 'The theory that a country remains foreign with respect to the tariff laws until Congress has acted by embracing it within the customs union presupposes that a country may be domestic for one purpose and foreign for another. ”

“ Now if the foreign markets for our products are re [Pg 134] duced only one fourth by the effect of a redundant currency, inflating here the cost of production and of living, the result would be most disastrous to our industry. The reduction would be equal, as we have seen, to $125,000,000 per annum, and $1,250,000,000 in the decade. Our imports would be reduced in the same proportion, and our revenue from customs in a corresponding ratio. Supposing the average rate of duties of the present tariff to be equal to 40 per cent. ”

“ And then I say that, as the tariff enhances the price of the things the manufacturer has to use in the production of his finished article, it enhances the cost of production; and as it enhances the cost of production, it enhances the price the manufacturer must ask for his finished product to make a reasonable profit; and as it enhances the selling price of the manufactured goods, it puts them at a disadvantage in the foreign market, renders them unfit for exportation, and thus narrows and cripples our foreign commerce. ”

“ It must follow that, as long as a locality is in a position where it is subject to the power of Congress to levy an impost tariff duty on merchandise coming from that country into the United States, such country must be a foreign country within the meaning of the tariff laws. ”

“ Emphasis is laid instead on the fact that in the last analysis the trade is of goods for goods, not of money for goods, and that a tariff on imports reduces, not only imports, but exports also,—that it merely interrupts temporarily the virtual barter between nations. ”

“ If any of them seem absurd and needlessly exact, you must remember that every one of them has been fought over between government and importers, between foreign and American dealers, and between rival importers, and has been established by experience as the best adjustment of all conflicting interests. For the tariff system is the growth of centuries. ”

“ It is by no means desirable, however, that the policy under consideration should be applied to these countries alone. The healthful enlargement of our trade with Europe, Asia, and Africa should be sought by reducing tariff burdens on such of their wares as neither we nor the other American States are fitted to produce, and thus enabling ourselves to obtain in return a better market for our supplies of food, of raw materials, and of the manufactures in which we excel. ”

“ In the end these duties are paid by the producer. Every bushel of wheat, corn, or other grain, shipped over a railroad, pays part. Protective tariffs are so interwoven with the construction of railroads and the internal commerce of the country that they cannot be separated from the questions we have been discussing. All tariff duties are direct charges upon the productions of this country, and not on any other. Import duties are not paid by the people of the country from whence the goods are imported, but by our own people. ”

“ Such a tariff contrasts strangely with that of this country, in which 10 per cent is the basis of duty adopted for importations of foreign manufactures, and 5 per cent for foreign raw products.
Can we wonder that, with such a tariff, legitimate imports are of so small account, and that the smuggler intervenes to redress the enormously disproportionate balance, and administer to the wants of the community? ”

“ As I have indicated, it is increasingly clear that to obtain and maintain that equity and substantial equality of treatment essential to the flourishing foreign trade, which becomes year by year more important to the industrial and commercial welfare of the United States, we should have a flexibility of tariff sufficient for the give and take of negotiation by the Department of State on behalf of our commerce and industry. ”

“ Investors, demanding interest payments from foreign debtors, will no longer be able to maintain the attitude that imports menace the prosperity of the country and should be cut down by the restrictions of the tariff. Exporters will find that the current is set against them, and that they can broaden their market only as they stimulate still greater growth in the import trade. ”

“ We demand such an equitable tariff on foreign imports which come into competition with American products as will not only furnish adequate revenue for the necessary expenses of the Government, but will protect American labor from degradation to the wage level of other lands. ”

“ When Congress passed the 1930 Tariff Act there were roughly 700 categories of imports. Since that time—with the adoption of the Reciprocal Trade Agreement Act—the number of categories has been increased by the thousands. Most of the increases were in categories created to help foreign countries expand their trade in the United States. The duty on a comparatively few imports has been revised upward as a measure of protecting some of the American industries from lower-cost foreign competition. ”

“ Foreign competition once abolished by the increased prices of foreign articles, the native manufacturer will always minimise, and even destroy, the protection afforded by the tariff, by increasing his own prices. If he cannot do so naturally he will do so by lessening his output; with the result that sooner or later the tariff will actually increase foreign imports and still further limit home production. ”

“ Our present system throws away, so to speak, the advantage of our vast and varied importation by electing to place the burden of duties entirely on very few articles. As against this system the Tariff Reformer favours the principle of a widespread tariff, of making all foreign imports pay, but pay moderately, and he holds that it is no more than justice to the British producer that all articles brought to the British market should contribute to the cost of keeping it up. ”

“ In new countries, not exporters of manufactured goods, import duties are universally found to be the least irksome form of taxation. If under a moderate tariff industries are established earlier than would be possible without some Protection, the incidental advantage is secured of varied employment for the people. ”

“ The second objection to section 315 is that the declared plan of Congress, either expressly or by clear implication, formulates its rule to guide the President and his advisory Tariff Commission as one directed to a tariff system of protection that will avoid damaging competition to the country's industries by the importation of goods from other countries at too low a rate to equalize foreign and domestic competition in the markets of the United States. ”

“ A protective tariff is, of course, a plain case of preferential class legislation, and so was the original Inter-state Commerce Act. They were designed to substitute artificial preferences for those effected by unregulated individual action, on the ground that the proposed modification of the natural course of trade would contribute to the general economic prosperity. ”