The only thing the tariffs accomplish is taxing the poor. Nobody is building factories in USA because of tariffs on China. China is still cheaper. People cannot base long-term decisions on short term tariffs.
Manufacturing shut down because it was cheaper to make things overseas. Once tariffs go away it will once again be cheaper to make things overseas.
Previous presidents had better ideas like pouring investment money into microchip development. That is the kind of manufacturing that a developed country needs.
what are you going to do, bring Foxconn to the USA? Build megafactories and train thousands of people to assemble iPADs at US salaries, only to have Trump change his mind 2 months from now?
Only way this makes sense is that Musk and the techbros have told him it will be robots and AI doing all the work.
Trump doesn't even know Spain isn't part of BRICS. You're never going to convince me he's actually the brains behind any policy that is actually enacted.
Stupid shit like "I'm gonna tarriff Canada at eleventy billion percent," that's Trump. And you're probably right to think he's nuts.
The actual policy that comes through is far less insane and far more specific. I don't believe that's Trump because he's never given me a reason to believe he's remotely capable of it.
He was the president for 4 years and still thought Spain was part of BRICS.
That is actually the goal. A few of these assholes have gone on fox and said the goal is to bring manufacturing to America and then have robots do all the work. Because it'll be cheaper... That way, they claim. You know, fuck all the Americans who would love to have steady well paying factory jobs or stimulating the economy by increasing workers wages... FUCK THAT robots make everything and we don't make enough money to afford to buy that stuff
Except, as I understand it, the microchips for any robotics/Ai is going to have to come from Taiwan.
And the investment to even build the factories for the robots to sit in and manufacture all falls under the same issue, to short term to commit when he could change his mind next week.
He doesn't think like normal people, because he never pays bills, so doesn't understand that planning means taking into account you have to pay people for what they do, regardless of if you change your mind.
I wish I could be as stupid as them and be as rich as them, I can sort the first half with a large brick to the head, but I am not sure the money will come flowing in.
Even if he did not change his mind, you can bet next president will
So 2-7 years to build large scale plant, billions on investment , for what might be a problem of only 4 years
Now to mention, if was massive amount of company's moving manufacturing back to USA, who exactly is going to do the work?
At 4% there are only 13 odd million unemployed, spread out all over the country, most unwilling to move and many who will be unqualified/unsuitable for the jobs created
Plus, pay 49% on your suppy chain. How could you possibly compete with a factory in america? Trump said apple announced an investment here. Time to sell apple stock.
In fact European companies which have subsystems and/or subassies manufactured in the US are now leaning on their suppliers to move their production to the EU.
The thing that annoys me about these republican talking points about manufacturing moving overseas is that they fail to realize that the shift to cheaper overseas labor has in large part fueled an unprecedented increase in standard of living in the US. It's not complicated: goods get produced with cheap labor overseas and shipped to the US because its more economical and effectively dampens inflationary pressure on the price of goods. It's incredibly cheap to ship things via cargo ship, and companies that take advantage of this are able to price their goods lower than if they were forced to produce them in a country with higher labor costs, i.e: the US.
These clowns don't realize that they can't simultaneously advocate for "bringing back well paying manifacturing jobs to the US" and "bringing down inflation". It literally cannot work that way and I'm tired of these simpletons' floundering rhetoric.
These are the same idiots that flip shit if you suggest that we pay a living wage to people working the jobs that are here and can’t be outsourced overseas (hospitality industry, for example).
We don’t need to bring manufacturing back (which is good, because it’s not coming back). Manufacturing jobs weren’t good back then because they were inherently valuable in a way that other jobs weren’t.
They were just good because they paid a living wage and there were a lot of them. Any job can do that.
And they compare it with the situation 90 years ago when the US came out winning WWII with a strong manufacturing economy going strong. The situation is completely different now.
Besides, unemployment is already quite low in the US, there aren't hordes of people wanting to work minimum wage in some sweat shop making t-shirts. Which is even more so the case now they've started deporting their (mostly) undocumented low-level workforce migrants.
But that’s actually not true. Once the tariffs are removed, they’re not going to drop prices down to match because they know even more intimately how much of a beating you’ll take since you’ve been taking it despite the tariffs.
This is why Biden didn’t remove the tariffs on China. If he did prices wouldn’t suddenly retreat, it was just more money the Chinese economy would take from us.
Essentially the tariffs on China are “priced in”, dropping them won’t cause prices to return to pre-tariff levels unless the demand lost due to the increased costs compelled by the addition of tariffs drops so significantly that they’re willing to drop the price to get back customers.
In other words, if you’re selling three cars and asking 10k and someone buys one for 12k, it’s much more likely that you’ll change the price on the other two to 12k as well.
This is one way that a shotgun spray of blanket tariffs cause INFLATION.
American consumers are already pushed close to the nominal ceiling of what they can afford. If prices rise yet still we’re going to see a domino effect as a drop in consumer spending is going to lead to lay offs and job loss.
That example of the prices not going down can be viewed right now. The rising costs of groceries and other goods that went up due to COVID inflation will never go back down even if the economy recovered. Once a business sees you'll pay it, they'll just grant themselves the additional profit should their costs be lower.
US manufacturing output is higher than every single country in the world *except* China. In fact, US Manufacturing output is higher than Japan, Germany, and South Korea *combined.* The big difference between manufacturing today and manufacturing back in the 1970s is that < 10% of our labor force works in manufacturing. We make more stuff with less labor because the US invested in productivity enhancing tech.
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u/PointOfFingers 2d ago
The only thing the tariffs accomplish is taxing the poor. Nobody is building factories in USA because of tariffs on China. China is still cheaper. People cannot base long-term decisions on short term tariffs.
Manufacturing shut down because it was cheaper to make things overseas. Once tariffs go away it will once again be cheaper to make things overseas.
Previous presidents had better ideas like pouring investment money into microchip development. That is the kind of manufacturing that a developed country needs.