If you get irate over income or property taxes, don’t look down at your feet. You’ll feel worse if you do, because the costs that go into many Americans’ shoes contain the country’s most unfair taxes.

The American tariff system rarely draws attention. The Trump-era tariffs on metals and Chinese goods were unusual. They were hotly debated, drew foreign retaliation, and raised prices on many consumer goods and industrial inputs.

Those who investigate the permanent tariff system find a few predictable things: Tariffs are an inefficient form of tax that enable price increases without increasing supply or affecting demand, and they are a relatively small revenue source for the U.S. at about $85 billion in 2021. But they also find something both startling and grating: Tariffs are easily the most regressive of all U.S. taxes, forcing the poor to pay more than anyone else.

This is because permanent U.S. tariffs mostly tax a few basic household goods. Clothes, shoes, silverware, dinner plates and drinking glasses account for about 6% of imports, but (excluding the Trump tariffs) raise about half of all tariff revenue. This is because tariff rates on these products, which have hardly changed since the 1960s, average about 11%—compared with the 0.7% average for other goods.
 

"I'll Tax Your Feet"
By Ed Gresser
for the Wall Street Journal

This week, the Progressive Policy Institute’s Reinventing America’s Schools (RAS) Project released a new report with a dire message to the Biden Administration and parents across the country: If the Department of Education’s proposed regulations on charter schools are adopted as drafted , it will be difficult — if not impossible — for charter schools to qualify for federal start-up grants under the Department’s Charter School Program (“CSP”). As a result, thousands of children and families will be denied high-quality, innovative education options. The report, “A Bureaucratic Plan to Disempower Parents,” is authored by Will Marshall, President of PPI, and Tressa Pankovits, Co-Director of PPI’s Reinventing America’s Schools Project.

“The proposed rules, if adopted, will inevitably stall the growth of charter and other autonomous, innovative public schools desired by communities with urgent academic needs,” write Marshall and Pankovits. “We urge the White House to intervene to stop the Department of Education’s bureaucratic attack on the federal CSP and, by extension, on parents who wish to choose the public schools that best fit their children’s needs. This is not the time for progressives to defend the educational status quo and turn their back on Black and Hispanic and low-income parents who have long been shortchanged by our legacy school system. Instead, President Biden and the Democrats should pick up where Presidents Clinton and Obama left off, by championing public school innovation and modernization,” they continue.

The CSP is a hallmark of the Clinton Administration. It has been supported by every administration since, with the Obama Administration greatly expanding its innovation school improvement goals. Created in 1994, the CSP provides federal funding to state education agencies (SE) and nonprofit education organizations to encourage the development and continuous refinement of new models for public schools. CSP start-up grants have been a critical catalyst of America’s public school choice movement. More than half of today’s charter schools have received a grant. This has made high-quality public schools available to millions of low-income and minority families whose children are too often consigned to low-performing schools. Nationwide, charter schools are in high demand, often with long waiting lists. Public charter school enrollment increased by nearly a quarter of a million students during the pandemic.

PPI’s Director of Health Care, Arielle Kane sits down with Dr. Sarah Oh Lam from the Technology Policy Institute to discuss the benefits and barriers to telehealth services in the latest episode of the Mosaic Moment podcast series. The two explore policy recommendations to expand internet access, promote digital literacy, and ensure telehealth patients receive high-quality care. 

Newly elected Congresswoman Shontel Brown from Ohio's 11th district joins Jeremiah to discuss her special election victory and joining Congress. They cover issues like the war in Ukraine, why having a local political background matters, how Congress is more productive than you think, and how Democrats can win with a positive, uplifting vision for America.