craps table of all Asia, with a whopping GDP p/c rake-off of $80,893. And then there are the remaining countries... (The list totals 11 due to Hong Kong and Macau being tied for lowest tariffs, with none at all, and Australia and Swaziland neck-and-neck at 1.18%, the highest of the lowest.) The remaining countries are not, for the most part, as abjectly poor as the poorest countries in the Top 10 tariff bracket. They aren’t hellholes – but you can smell the infernal pit’s sulfur fumes from there. Botswana – .59% tariff $7,596 GDP p/c Georgia – .67% tariff $4,078 GDP p/c Mauritius – .79% tariff $10,547 GDP p/c Namibia – 1.03% tariff $5,227 GDP p/c Albania – 1.06% tariff $4,539 GDP p/c Swaziland – 1.18% tariff $3,224 GDP p/c Trade barriers aren’t the only problems facing impoverished countries. Other difficulties involve health, education, neighbors, and, most of all, the foolish, incompetent, and corrupt governments that made these countries impoverished in the first place – even if those governments did have the sense to set low tariff rates. Free trade is a good thing, like having the Lone Ranger on your side, but that masked man doesn’t always fire silver bullets. culture, infrastructure, geography, weather, ethnic strife, belligerent
$64,101. And Bahamas is comfortably within the economic upper-middle-class of nations with a GDP p/c of $30,762 (slightly less than Italy’s). What allows these free trade heretics to go unpunished and, indeed, prosper in their apostasy? Income tax in Bermuda: 0%. Income tax in the Cayman Islands: 0%. Income tax in the Bahamas: 0%. And corporate tax, capital gains tax, tax on dividends and interest: 0% in all three locations. So go ahead, you protectionists, raise America’s tariffs! Think big! Don’t let yourselves be outdone by puny Bermuda. Make the U.S. import duty 20%, 25%, or even higher! There’s just one little (very, very little, 0%) condition... Meanwhile, the countries with the bottom 10 lowest tariff rates also present conundrums. These have rates of 1.18% or less and include three of the most vigorous economies on earth – Hong Kong, Singapore, and Australia. (It should be noted that the U.S., at 1.67%, has a fairly low rate as well.) But the Bottom 10 also includes two places so economically anomalous that their tariff rates seem beside the point. Tiny Brunei, with the population of Wichita, Kansas, is afloat in oil and aloft on natural gas, has no national debt, and is rated by Forbes as the fifth richest country in the world. Even the tinier and not much more populous Macau is the Other statistics explain it:
- P. J. O’Rourke
American Consequences 27
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