I always find the suggestion that import duties/taxes are repressive a little disingenuous simply because all taxation is repressive. It is taking “that part of the revenues of a state which is obtained by compulsory dues and charges upon its subjects.”
Dr. Olivia Saunders has her say about the 'oppressiveness' of indirect taxation here...
In his essay Taxation Is Robbery, Frank Chodorov tells us:
"The clear-cut direct taxes are those levied on incomes, inheritances, gifts, land values. It will be seen that such appropriations lend themselves to soak-the-rich propaganda, and find support in the envy of the incompetent, the bitterness of poverty, the sense of injustice which our monopoly-economy engenders. Direct taxation has been advocated since colonial times (along with equal and universal suffrage), as the necessary implementation of democracy, as the essential instrument of “leveling.” The opposition of the rich to direct taxation added virulence to the reformers who plugged for it. In normal times the state is unable to overcome this well-knit, articulate and resourceful opposition. But, when war or the need of ameliorating mass poverty strains the purse of the state to the limit, and further indirect impositions are impossible or threaten social unrest, the opposition must give way. The state never relinquishes entirely the prerogatives it acquires during an “emergency,” and so, after a series of wars and depressions direct taxation became a fixture of our fiscal policy, and those upon whom it falls must content themselves to whittling down the levies or trying to transfer them from shoulder to shoulder."
"Even as it was predicted, during the debates on the income tax in the early part of the century, the soak-the-rich label turns out to be a wicked misnomer. It was impossible for the state to contain itself once this instrument of getting additional revenue was put into its hands. Income is income, whether it stems from dividends, bootlegging operations, gambling profits or plain wages. As the expenses of the state mount, as they always do, legal inhibitions and considerations of justice or mercy are swept aside, and the state dips its hands into every pocket...
Chodorov's closing paragraph in his essay was quite compelling:
"All this argument, however, is a concession to the obfuscation with which custom, law and sophistry have covered up the true character of taxation. There cannot be a good tax nor a just one; every tax rests its case on compulsion."
