Comment on How can you oppose tariffs, while supporting a hardline against China on Taiwan?
Diddlydee@feddit.uk 11 months ago
There was no war with manufacturing partners. Trump started one with his silly plan. He doesn’t understand tariffs at all, and that’ll be to the detriment of the average Joe. Things will be more expensive to produce (the US relies heavily on imports and doesn’t have a strong manufacturing base for most products). Raw materials will still need to be imported, and you can bet the importers will charge the US more for them in retaliation.
The best solution was to let sleeping dogs lie, but the Fantascist wouldn’t understand this. He’s either an economically clueless buffoon or is shorting the market so his ilk can benefit.
the US relies heavily on imports and doesn’t have a strong manufacturing base for most products
And that’s the problem Trump is seemingly trying to fix. I agree he’s not going about the right way. His approach is a kind of clumsy shock therapy, that will cause chaos in at least the short term and may or may not produce the desired result, eventually, but reshoring production and rebuilding a strong manufacturing base for the US is a goal shared by the Democrats, as well.
I think saying it is short term is very hopeful. The ripples of this will be felt for many years. You can’t suddenly magic manufacturing infrastructure and supply chains into existence. It’s a long road to do that with seemingly no plan in the interim, and I’ve no doubt that tariffs will be changed many times at his whim, so it’s hard for anyone to set up any manufacturing business when they can’t get a solid grip on their costs, given the need to import raw materials and components.
Making items on home soil for your own market is a good idea but it takes a lot of time, and the general feeling in the rest of the world is that countries will want to import fewer US goods, so export markets for the US will dwindle, and I doubt there is enough buying power in the US to get the growth he wants. I’m sure he’ll start selling to his Russian buddies when the time comes, but doubt that will be enough to fix his mess.
I agree, rebuilding a US manufacturing base will require competent planning and management, but those are bad words here in the US, when it comes to the economy. To many Americans, competent, central economic management, direction, and planning is tyrannical rule by elites. To those Americans, Trump is the antidote. You might point out that there is significant irony in that. I agree, it is ironic, but that irony is completely lost on many millions of Americans.
I agree that a centrally planned economy controlled by the elites would be tyranny. It needs to be controlled by local worker councils.
But that’s communism, and a dealbreaker for many people, regardless of whether it’s better.
Even if tariffs worked the way Trump wanted and it magically brings all this manufacturing back to the USA, it will still cause extreme inflation in the USA. The reason foreign goods are so cheap? Dirt cheap labor. To manufacture these goods in the USA would mean orders of magnitude higher labor costs and ultimately orders of magnitude higher price of goods to the consumer. Inflation.
surph_ninja@lemmy.world 11 months ago
But this issue predates Trump. Trump is starting a trade war, but Biden was escalating militarily with China. Both seem like very, very bad ideas.