I hope so! But unfortunately, opponents often don't have to go through voters, their role as donors, or potential donors to opponents, is enough. 1/

If we could get public engagement for a smart capital flow management norm, that might override, but as you say, it'd take some education before voters see and understand and might affirmatively support this stuff. 2/

I don't think it's impossible! I think voters are only stupid when the zone is flooded with shit, and under anything approaching sane electoral, media, and civil society institutions publics can be powerfully motivated for not obvious or stupid things. 3/

So, I try to do my part to make the case. But I'm not so hopeful under current circumstances, when the zone is noah's flood of shit, our commercial institutions prefer we stay divided and subject to their algorithms and ads, our electoral institutions encourage fascism. /fin

The effect isn’t restricted to rich people investment, but it affects it very directly, whereas tariffs affect only consumption costs directly. Investors prefer tariffs to capital controls. Ask them. 1/

A foreign payouts tax would affect the relative pricing of domestic vs foreign goods, but less than a tariff, because a large part of gross trade flows offset. Tariffs tax the gross trade flows, both sides if there’s retaliation. 2/

A foreign payouts tax affects only net flows, affects prices less and targets only what we mean to discourage — overall (not bilateral) imbalance. /fin

“If it were easy, Trump would have done it.” I don’t think so. I don’t think Trump understands the connection between net capital flows and trade imbalance. I think he decided in his 20s or 30s that tariffs are great and have fetishized it since. 1/

Capital controls restrict rich-people investment, rather than merely raise consumption costs that are in any case a small fraction of rich-person income and wealth like tariffs. Trump wouldn’t like the idea of restricting rich-people investing. /fin

( there’s a whole series of posts on this, see the list at the end. i really do think this is the best mechanism for balancing trade given the current low-trust state if geopolitics. )