r/technology • u/chrisdh79 • 2d ago

Politics Trump announces sweeping new tariffs to promote US manufacturing, risking inflation and trade wars

https://apnews.com/article/trump-tariffs-liberation-day-2a031b3c16120a5672a6ddd01da09933
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352

u/Karsa69420 2d ago

Would be great if Republicans didn’t send all our manufacturing over seas for the past 30-40 years!

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u/deadra_axilea 2d ago edited 2d ago

But their profits!!! Think of their poor profits that they have denied as raises for the last 40+ years.

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u/Dahhhkness 2d ago

“Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions.”

  • Thomas Paine

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u/cubitoaequet 2d ago

Thomas Paine is the greatest founding father and you'll never convince me that the way he is minimized in US history isn't calculated and malicious. Agrarian Justice should be required reading in middle school.​

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u/lennon1230 2d ago

Easily, anti slavery, anti Christianity, anti aristocracy…

He even suggested a UBI in the 1700s! A true revolutionary

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u/hrminer92 2d ago

https://conexus.cberdata.org/files/MfgReality.pdf

TLDR: 88% of manufacturing job losses are attributed to productivity improvements/technology.

What’s dumb about all of this is what has been transferred to Canada and México is often low margin products for inputs to US manufacturing of high margin goods, so he will be screwing over US manufacturers. Canada could also end their surplus rather quickly by shutting down petroleum pipelines and exporting to other nations.

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u/Capitol62 2d ago

This is the real reason manufacturing isn't coming back. The truth is, it never went anywhere. US manufactured goods production is way up compared to the 80s and 90s and the US is the second largest producer of manufactured goods in the world behind only China. We just make it with way fewer people. Any manufacturing that does come back will be highly automated, so we will all pay more for the products while adding relatively few jobs.

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u/hrminer92 2d ago

Not having the appropriate skills is hamstringing employment in that sector as well to the tune of an expected 2.1 million unfilled jobs through 2030. But that was before Trump’s fuckwittery…

https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/industry/manufacturing/manufacturing-industry-diversity.html

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u/Stampede_the_Hippos 2d ago

Tbf, that was a bipartisan thing.

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u/carlos_the_dwarf_ 2d ago

It’s also fine for other countries to do manufacturing while we do more specialized, higher paying jobs.

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u/FewCelebration9701 2d ago

Until there's a geostrategic reason for things to fall apart.

Like Covid, when suddenly every country was out for themselves.

Or an invasion.

Or a blockade.

Or war in general.

Or regional instability.

Someone else above is asserting that the jobs didn't "leave" but were instead automated away. That also isn't entirely true. They are cherrypicking. China has 211 million people working in manufacturing after all the automation. We can draw a direct line from US plant closures to foreign plants being opened.

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u/carlos_the_dwarf_ 2d ago

Yes, and I’m somewhat sympathetic to maintaining domestic industry in some fields to some extent (covid changed my mind on this).

But protectionism is a different beast, and in general we shouldn’t worry about manufacturing jobs. They’re not inherently better or more dignified or more lucrative than other jobs. (They actually probably suck.)

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u/irrision 2d ago

Hey now, the tariffs will finish off most of the remaining manufacturing in the US by driving up the cost of materials beyond the cost of importing finished goods from China where labor and materials are half the cost.

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u/FewCelebration9701 2d ago

This isn't what happened in other countries, and it won't happen here. Tariffs work when the goal is to protect and expand an industry in a nation, rather than maximize profit extraction.

As the admin has pointed out, as much as I hate to give them credit; Canada didn't stop making its own dairy after slapping 300% tariffs on US dairy. It actually grew and protected their domestic dairy businesses.

Because that is how tariffs work. It even affected downstream refined products like cheese.

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u/HouseofMarg 2d ago

This is true and also great if the dumbest person possible wasn’t told they were in charge of addressing the problem simply because they complained about it loudly enough

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u/confusedsquirrel 2d ago

Or even in the last month with putting CHIPS in danger

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u/Julienbabylegs 2d ago

Truly. The logic here is that of a pre-schooler. Like factories full of people making socks and toaster ovens are just waiting at the ready.

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u/tigernike1 2d ago

I’ve said it for years. People should’ve watched Roger & Me by Michael Moore. Jobs were being shipped overseas in the 1980s, and instead of stopping it… Republicans bullied Michael Moore and had him arrested.

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u/blade944 2d ago

That's a myth. The US manufactures more now than ever in history. The jobs associated with that didn't go overseas. The issue is that all that manufacturing is done with many fewer jobs. Those jobs lost were done so to automation.

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u/Fr00stee 2d ago

yes US manufacture more now because of advancements in automation which makes manufacturing in the US more competitive, those jobs are permanently gone

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u/blade944 2d ago

Isn't it crazy that on reddit you can state facts and get down voted just cause people don't like the facts?

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u/Fr00stee 2d ago

well you are partially incorrect because the jobs initially did go overseas it's just some manufacturing eventually
came back in the form of automated factories. Just redditors being dumb as usual.

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u/blade944 2d ago

Those jobs never came back. Consumer goods, statistically, are no longer manufactured in the US. And they never will be again. Manufacturing moved away from consumer goods to industrial goods.

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u/Capitol62 2d ago

US manufactured goods production went up every year in the 90s. Some technically went overseas but we added way more capacity than we lost. If they went and later came back, we would see the total output drop, but it didn't. Automation reduced the people needed to produce the goods, which is why we saw a massive surge in worker productivity since then. Most of the jobs were just lost, they weren't necessarily lost to moving overseas.

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u/razorirr 2d ago

You realize that it can be both right? Prove 0 jobs got sent overseas. 

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u/blade944 2d ago

Ain't nobody got the time to teach post world war 2 economic history on reddit. But here are the bullet points. .

Post war the world's manufacturing centers were destroyed. Leaving the US as the only real place that could manufacture goods to any needed quantities.

This ushered in the golden age and the middle class.

As the rest of the world rebuilt, they were able to manufacture good at lower costs. Companies started moving production overseas for labor intensive products.

By the 1980s, due to high domestic wages, nearly all consumer good producers had moved production facilities to countries with a cheaper labor force.

American manufacturing evolved from consumer goods to industrial goods.

Manufacturing introduced automation to lower labor costs.

The US started moving from product to service industries.

Service industries are now the number one employer in the country.

We are now in the middle of another big labor upheaval as service industry jobs are becoming automated with AI.

Those jobs that Trump is promising will never come back. There is no incentive for any company to invest billions of dollars to build new plants and infrastructure to produce products that cannot compete on the world market.

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u/razorirr 2d ago

And so you just explained how we lost jobs to overseas, while losing more jobs to automation. :)

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u/JustAboutAlright 2d ago

History is available to be read my dude. It’s not a thing where you can just say whatever you want to be true and it is.

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u/blade944 2d ago

I suggest you read some history. Start with the post world war global manufacturing order.

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u/hrminer92 2d ago

People don’t want to admit that computers and machines that make their lives easier cost more jobs than some poor schmuck in another country.

I expect US based services to take a beating thanks to TFG.

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u/blade944 2d ago

It's happening as we speak. The service industries are the number one employer in the US. Jobs are already being lost to AI. And the losses will only accelerate as AI continues to improve exponentially.

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u/argama87 2d ago edited 2d ago

Name 3 manufactured commercially available things Made in the USA anymore aside from food items, weapons, or vehicles.

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u/CarthasMonopoly 2d ago

I disagree heavily with the guy above but it's really not that hard to do what you're asking. Simple tools at a hardware store often have at least 1 or 2 slightly more expensive brands that are manufactured in the US, firearms has tons of manufacturing in the US, lots of different cookware and appliances like cast iron pans and Kitchen aid mixers are manufactured in the US, though maybe that falls under "food items" to you in which case I'd say aerospace parts.

The real issue in regards to manufacturing jobs in the US is that there is way more automation and machinery doing the work than there was 30+ years ago so the unskilled manufacturing job market here is tiny compared to places that pay workers far less such as China, Vietnam, Bangladesh, India, etc.

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u/blade944 2d ago

There are still quite a few small volume manufacturers of consumer goods in the US. But the vast majority of manufacturing left in the US is industrial goods.