Earlier (January 20, 2020): Oklahoma Is Already Taxing Remittances, Why Can't President Trump?
The current financial crisis is caused by the China Virus, a disease that comes from overseas. Who's going to pay for it? Well, one suggestion is to try to make the Chinese help pay for it, with a tax on remittances.
The Pew Research Center has an estimate of how much money flows out of the country in remittances:
Worldwide, an estimated $625 billion (USD) was sent by migrants to individuals in their home countries in 2017, a 7% increase from 2016, when the amount was $586 billion, according to economists at the World Bank. This increase follows two consecutive years of decline.
Remittance flows worldwide in 2017
$148,489,000,000 in remittances was sent from United States to other countries in 2017.
April 3, 2019
Mexico is tops in remittances, with $30 billion, much of it from illegals, but China is number two, with $16 billion. This is a screenshot from Pew's interactive map.
If the US Government can tax Mexican remittances to pay for the Wall (it hasn't, yet, but it can) it can tax Chinese remittances to pay for the Coronavirus crisis. The money will be a drop in the bucket of the trillion dollars they're spending, of course, but it's a symbol. As Tom Cotton says, China has to pay for this.
The actual payment will come when Congress enacts tariffs and various kinds of protection for US industry.
