As a general principle, any form of tax tends to deter the particular production processes, sales, purchases, or other activities on which it is imposed. As a consequence, it distorts the normal market allocation of resources, impeding individuals from realizing the requirements of their personal value scales to an optimal degree. The taxing authorities are often aware of these effects and deliberately design taxes for their social-engineering purposes. Taxation thereby becomes a major vehicle for the wielding of political power—that is, for the imposition of the subjective values of rulers upon the general population. 
Trade Barriers
The category "trade barriers" includes tariffs—that is, taxes imposed on exchanges of goods across national or geographic boundaries—as well as import quotas and other interventions that discourage trade between nations or regions. As the law of association demonstrates, free, unimpeded trade increases general standards of living in all the trading countries, by enabling each country to specialize in production of those goods which it can produce least expensively because of its particular natural resources, native talents, and other factors (pp. 4.5:22-32). Consequently, any impediments to such trade must necessarily depress general standards of living in those countries. In general, the arguments for tariffs and other barriers seek to evade this natural law by focusing on some isolated effect of the interventionist policy, while ignoring its other effects. 
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