Is there really any way to get us making things again?
Part of me feels like that would be better for workers, but I'm kind of a dumbass
Do you want things to be cheaper or wages to be higher (especially wages for those in low wage jobs).
There were ideals about competitive advantage. But the whole economy has been undercut by lower wages elsewhere that things got cheaper but not because of increases in productivity in the economy so wages went down.
There are a lot of pressure to deflate wages with free trade and immigration. But things that increase wages like market forces and limited labour aren't really a factor anymore.
Making things again would be taxes on imports, free education, tax breaks for RandD and investment. Also subsidies and blocks on exporting IP and knowledge.
So trumps tariff plan could get us making things in America again or no? It seems like workers had a lot more power and therefore higher wages before america de-industrialized and that was a better thing for the average person but I don't know I wasn't around then
I'm not American so I don't really know what's going on. It seems that people, especially on this website, can't see anything Trump says or does as a positive because he isn't on their team. But he certainly has said and done things that are right or a positive at least for some people. Can't just disagree with someone for the sole reason you don't like him.
But economics is complicated. For example trade barriers make things more expensive and could increase jobs or decrease them. Or more accurately increase in some areas and decrease in others. No one knows what's going to happen for sure, even looking back people disagree on what has happened.
But I personally think there has been too much emphasis on GDP growth around the western world and lower business costs rather than increasing discretionary income and jobs for lowest earners. So policies that are weighted for that rather than businesses I see as net gain at the moment.
Trump is an evil bigot but yeah even a broken clock is right twice a day. I can't stand people who dismiss or demonize an argument for the sole reason that it has been voiced by trump.
To be fair, it's corporations choosing to raise the price instead of making less money. You see this exact argument from the other side when the left wants to make the wealthy pay taxes. Either way it's a deeply flawed argument.
I mean it's an inherently anti-consumer policy, the question is if that hit to consumer choice is worth it for the manufacturers that are getting a leg up, or to kneecap a foreign adversary who's making a play at market capture.
Trump doesn't have anything close to the market awareness to make these judgement calls with any degree of accuracy outside of tariffing literally everything that's imported and hoping it hits some of the right spots.
There is an economic argument that goods are selling at the clearing rate. We sell widgets for $5 because that's the price point at which we move the most number of widgets and therefore generate the most revenue.
If we start taxing imported widgets by $1/ea, the retailer has to choose between stocking the domestic widget (expensive but no tax) versus the imported widget (cheap but taxed). But they still want to maximize the units sold, so they won't raise the price above $5.
There is a counterargument that tariffs will cause importers to redirect their supply to other countries. That drives the gross inventory down over time and raises the clearing price above $5.
But, broadly speaking, tariffs will raise the price of goods that we can't efficiently make in the US while the price of goods we can make will remain largely unchanged. So this then raises the question, What Do We Make in the United States Today?
The question is: what should we be making in the US?
Tariffs can give domestic manufacturing a temporary reprieve from lower priced foreign suppliers, to build or improve domestic manufacturing.
They can also be used to try to punish other countries for unfair trading practices
For example
I’m not convinced that they’ve put this much thought into it, nor that domestic manufacturers will use this window of opportunity
100% tariffs on Chinese manufactured EVs are claimed to be in retaliation on for unfair Chinese government subsidies
The Chinese government subsidies are the same set of public improvements and business incentives every industrial country provides to build up domestic infrastructure. They're significantly less generous than the Big Three Bailouts that Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden all had to extend at least once in each of their terms.
US government is offering incentives to domestic EV manufacturers
But this is also an "unfair" subsidy, isn't it?
I’m not convinced that they’ve put this much thought into it, nor that domestic manufacturers will use this window of opportunity
Foreign car companies - BYD being one, but Hyundai, Toyota, and Volkswagen certainly piling on the bandwagon - have invested far more money in small vehicle production than US contemporaries. Consequently, they tend to produce vehicles with better fuel economy at a much cheaper price point.
At the end of the day, that's what this tariff is penalizing.
Dumb decisions, people nervous, that sort of thing....
I mean, tariffs can definitely make sense if a country is making extremely cheap alternatives that destroy the local industry or if another country sells insanely cheap options to get a monopoly on the market to then increase the price.
Problem is that that country is miles ahead in the technology of the other country's local industry and has fine do through economies of scale while the other country keeps on pumping out high margin versions of their inferior product
Retailers in the US should add a second price tag with the 20pct included as an example
That should be the exact attack ad Harris uses.
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