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Tariffs have a long history in America en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H… so what Trump is doing is not exactly new. It was about protecting manufacturing, Trump's current claim.
Americans wanted cheap imports and got them when they decided to not look for the union label/made in USA. If tariffs were eliminated would anything be different today? Pe…
Tariffs have a long history in America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_tariffs_in_the_United_States so what Trump is doing is not exactly new. It was about protecting manufacturing, Trump's current claim.
Americans wanted cheap imports and got them when they decided to not look for the union label/made in USA. If tariffs were eliminated would anything be different today? People living on the financial edge will still want, even need, the lowest possible price. Tariffs just mean there will be no low prices at all.
I am not an economist so if there actually is some long-term benefit to what he is doing there are two important questions that I see. (1) can people afford/survive the wait? (2) Trump is temporary, and any potential gain will come after his presidency. Will the next administration put an end to what he is doing before that could happen, even long-term gain is possible? There is also a chance that manufacturers will decide that he is temporary, and the next administration will end his tariffs and not go to the expense of moving factories bac. No gain, plenty of pain.
Wise kings of old had court jesters. Someone with a sharp wit who could not just challenge the king's advisors but ridicule them. Trump does not have a jester or choose advisors who are not loyal yes men. That is not just unwise, it is dangerous.
Tariffs make sense if you have local industries to protect. We don't anymore. (Even things assembled in the USA are fabricated elsewhere.) Trump is just used to being the Big Man, the guy everyone HAS to deal with, so he can push them around to get whatever he can squeeze. In a multi-polar world, this is lunacy. But narcissists don't get where they are by thinking about others.
Exactly. Tariffs are actually an excellent way to protect local manufacturing or to encourage certain business practices when done in an intelligent, targeted way. But intelligent and targeted are not was that cone to ind when I think of Trump.
Tariffs aren’t new. But the *way* Trump is using them is relatively new.
When they’re used intelligently and in a targeted way, tariffs can be a great way of protecting local industries and competitive advantages. Many countries use them in that way today.
But arbitrarily and needlessly slapping tariffs on almost every country on Earth (not Russia, obviously) is economic mutually assured destruction. Except, given China’s trade dominance, it’s extremely likely Trump hurts America more than he does China in the long term.
I hope that you don't think I was endorsing what he is doing.
Trillions of words have been written about how bad Trump is so there is no need for me to add to the drone. His tariffs raise prices and are crushing my retirement savings.
My point was that any possible benefit of returning factories is not likely to happen until he is no longer in office, if at all on a scale that matters, and I doubt that his predecessor will continue them and not try to restore relationships with other countries. Small shops can be established fairly quickly but for big things, factories, moving equipment (loosing local capacity) and training are required. That takes time to take place and bring up to speed. I've taken part in that.
Short term pain and a low likelihood of long-term gain. I'm not a fan.
“I hope that you don't think I was endorsing what he is doing.”
No, not at all. I was just acknowledging that tariffs, in and of themselves, aren’t a bad thing. Trump’s handling of them has been so terrible that I think they’ve got a bad rap, but as you say, they aren’t exactly new and can be good.
As for factories moving back to the U.S. I think that ship has mostly sailed. Manufacturing in China is so much cheaper thanks to their effective slave labour, that any businesses that do come back will likely be mostly automated.
We wanted cheaper products, we turned a blind eye to the Chinese working conditions that made those prices possible, and we know we would never accept them for ourselves, meaning it’s basically impossible to compete.
China’s takeover of manufacturing is complete. Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t see any possibility of going back. The only country that might compete is India, and maybe African countries in a few years. But America has better get used to its trade deficit.