Are custom taxes against free market and competitivity?

Not always. If my country is not efficient, protection to goods coming from more productive countries will reinforce my inefficiency and won’t push my industry to improve, to invest and to work towards excellence.

But productivity is not equal to low prices. There are countries that achieve low production costs based on low wages, exploitative child labor, unsafe working conditions and dirty energy. Bad quality production allows low prices as well.

We want to live in a society where our effort is recompensed enough to be able to live in decent economic conditions: a house, mobility, family education, quality feed, etc. Our work place must be safe, and industry must control pollution in order to preserve environment.

If we protect our living standards but our country allows importing goods from countries who don’t, our living standards are at risk.

To balance this situation, countries must apply custom taxes that correct inequity: a simple calculation of cost saved thanks to bad work conditions must be done. This percentage of “inequity cost reduction” has to be applied as custom tax to every country. In this way, we make sure that prices reflect real productivity differences and social standards are ensured in our country.