Former President Bill Clinton Endorses Regressive US National Sales Tax at Billionaire's Conference, Recites Bogus Claim about Sales Tax Helping US Trade Former President Bill Clinton recently endorsed enactment of a regressive U.S. national sales tax ' a.k.a. a value-added tax or VAT. In doing so, he parroted a long-discredited argument that a sales tax would curb imports into the United State and encourage exports. Clinton made his remarks in an interview at an April 28, 2010 conference sponsored by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, one of many organizations founded by Peter G. Peterson, a billionaire investment banker who has long advocated big cuts in Social Security and lower taxes on capital gains ( i.e., on himself ). According to Clinton, the one thing that blue collar America should like about [ a sales tax ] is it's good for exports and it in effect, it doesn't allow quite so much subsidy of imports ' when other countries subsidize their production for export at least they get slapped with a value-added tax when it comes in here.