> They're both bad, but they're bad for different reasons: accepting that taxation is a necessary evil (I'm not sure I do, but set that aside), welfare involves paying out of tax revenues into individuals pockets. Tariffs are exactly the opposite - tariffs involve increasing tax revenue by collecting taxes on imports, and then using that tax revenue for whatever you use all the other tax revenue for.

If Mr. Widget isn't competitive at $100 vs. imports sold at $90, and you add a tariff of $10 so its "competitive", suddenly Mr. Widget's sales will increase. The other country, knowing their widgets aren't competitive (except $$ wise) then tariffs something like solar panels to protect a nascent solar panels industry.

Tariffs are a form of welfare for domestic corporations. Creating a new Mr. Widget on the assumption that tariffs will remain the same is an expensive gamble you take only if you are sure your widgets are better than Mr. Widget's widgets.

Subsidized loans (i.e. "The Bank of Boeing") are another example of welfare for domestic corporations.

Well, you can argue (as you seem to be, although I'm not entirely convinced) that tariffs and welfare lead to the same result, but to imply that opposing welfare means you must also oppose tariffs is a non-sequitur.

"Welfare" in this sense could mean imposing artificial limits on competition. The domestic industry receiving the shelter of the tariff benefits from increased supply. Although not a direct handout of cash, the industry benefits all the same. The benefits from a tariff for a domestic industry should be short lived. In the long run, tariffs hurt everyone.

The administration has also set aside $12 billion to relieve farmers hurt by the tariffs. [1] This money could come from the money generated by the tariffs, making it look more like a handout.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2018/07/24/631953880/trump-administratio...

Then you're diluting the term, which is also unfortunate. Corporate welfare is a useful term to refer to subsidies (again, completely different than tariffs), which actually _are_ income redistribution and should be opposed on the same basis.

Not sure why you find it necessary to draw such a firm distinction between subsidies, tariffs and the many other ways that firms can obtain advantages via crony capitalist schemes created in cahoots with sympathetic (if not corrupt) regulators.

Firms are going to be clever and will find ways to have laws passed that give them advantages over other firms.

This is one reason Zuck said he thinks Facebook should be regulated. As the biggest player in the space, Facebook can afford to hire the lawyers and additional staff necessary to comply with such regulation. Smaller firms on the other hand will be less able to afford this and so the regulation serves as a barrier to competition that insulates Facebook from competition.

Government crony deals come in all different shapes and sizes. In the early 2000s the government gave a big handout to oil companies by changing the accounting rules, allowing the firms to sell lots of oil at a massive profit without having to claim the profit, since they could suddenly consider the "cost" of the oil based on LIFO rather than FIFO. This small change gifted the industry with billions of dollars that would otherwise have been paid in corporate tax.

You might think that all these crony deals are a good thing and are just capitalism in action. Quite the contrary. Firms should be innovating better products and services, not figuring out ways to come up with sweet deals with regulators that give them advantages and steal from society or unfairly harm smaller, non-incumbent firms.

And to be sure, whenever those policies can be framed as being essential to national security, they will be, as this helps make the crony capitalism harder for the average person to spot and lets the jingoistic ideal of "helping our firms vs foreign firms" be the focal point.

I strongly disagree. Tariffs and welfare are both ways that the same thing manifests itself. They're both government handouts; just one is to those who are destitute, and one is to the wealthy.

Are you sure you're not mixing up tariffs and subsidies? Subsidies _are_ welfare - the government collects tax revenue and gives it to corporations. Tariffs are taxes imposed on imported goods. EvilEndures's argument (seems to be) that when you impose taxes on imported goods, exporters stop or reduce exportation (which is true, that's the point of tariffs after all) so that buyers are forced to buy through domestic manufacturers. The chain of causation there is pretty fragile, but that's _still_ not comparable to welfare where your money is forcibly redistributed - you were going to buy _x_ anyway, but you end up buying it for possibly a bit more money from a domestic supplier rather than a foreign one. It's not a good idea and it doesn't work to stimulate the economy the way its supporters want it to, but it's still pretty far from "welfare" in any common definition of the term, corporate or otherwise.

Tariffs are a subsidy.

I meant corporate welfare.