People that favor tariffs, want to bring manufacturing capabilities back to the US, in the hopes of creating jobs, and increasing national security by minimizing dependence on foreign governments for critical capabilities. This is legitimate cost benefit analysis not bellyfeel. People are aware of the increased cost associated with it.

Tariffs don't do this, though. If you want to do this, you just have to pass laws saying companies are required to manufacture x% of their goods domestically. Putting tariffs in place with no other controls will just see companies shift costs downstream, which is exactly what is happening.

Companies employ economists, lawyers, and legislators, all to ensure they can find workarounds for anything they don't like that's not 100% forced on them by a law (and will even flout the law if the cost/benefit works out).

All evidence is that tariffs have actually tanked jobs, precisely because companies are assuming a defensive fiscal posture in response to what they view as a hostile fiscal policy.

An aside on tariffs, it’s a tax (either literally depending on the upcoming SCOTUS ruling, or if not in name then in whatever language SCOTUS decides to call an additional fee consumers pay when buying goods. But a tax either way).

Relevant to the post, when supporters believe that “foreigners are swallowing 100% of the cost of the tariffs” they cheer them on. Those same supporters when they’re told the truth that consumers do end up with inflated prices because of them? Their support plummets.

They have a vague notion of wanting the quality of life back like they had In the past, everything else goes completely over their heads

>want >in the hopes of

But these are still bellyfeel words. What does more rigorous analysis of tariffs say about these things? Do they bring manufacturing back? Do they create jobs?

So if X% of the economy benefits directly you might say 100-X% of the people would benefit secondarily because the people who benefit would have more money to buy services, building, etc. Trouble is in the short term that X is probably less than 5% so that multiplier effect is not that big.

The industry that has the most intractable 'national security' issues in my mind is the drone industry. The problem there is that there are many American companies that would like to build expensive overpriced super-profitable drones for the military and other high-end consumers and none that want to build consumer-oriented drones at consumer-oriented prices. [1] Drones are transformational military because they are low cost and if you go to war with a handful of expensive overpriced drones against somebody who has an unlimited supply of cheap but deadly drones guess who ends up like the cavalry soldiers who faced tanks in WWI?

There is a case for industrial policy there and tariffs could be a tool but you should really look at: (1) what the Chinese did to get DJI established and (2) what the EU did to make Airbus into a competitor for Boeing. From that latter point of view maybe we need a "western" competitor to DJI and not necessarily an "American" competitor. There are a lot of things we would find difficult about Chinese-style industrial policy. If I had to point to once critical difference it's that people here thought Solyndra was a scandal and maybe it was but China had Solyndra over and over again in the process to dominate solar panels and sure it hurt but... they dominate solar panels.

[1] I think of how Microsoft decided each project in the games division had to be 30% profitable just because they have other hyperprofitable business lines, yet this is entirely delusional

Even ardent protectionists generally agree that tariffs can't bring jobs and manufacturing back by themselves. To work, they have to be accompanied by programs to nurture dead or failing domestic industries and rebuild them into something functional. Without that, you get results like the current state of US shipbuilding: pathetic, dysfunctional, and benefiting no one at all. Since there are no such programs, tariffs remain a cost with no benefit.

Nearly everyone we know has lived their entire lives in a world obsessed with reducing trade barriers, and grew up with a minimal general education on economics or geopolitics. So to assume anything more then a small subset of the population could talk coherently for 5 minutes on the topic of tariffs is, to me, absurd. Just look at how the general public responded to a surge in inflation after a couple decades of abnormally low rates. It's like asking someone if the Fed should raise or lower interest rates. It's not that people shouldn't have opinions on these things, just that most people don't care and among those who do, few have more than a TV-news level of understanding.

Also, there is a massive conflict of interest associated with trusting the opinions of companies actively engaged in labor and environmental arbitrage. Opinions of politicians and think-tanks downstream of them in terms of funding, too. Even if those opinions are legitimately more educated and better reasoned, they are on the opposite side of the bargaining table from most people and paying attention to them alone is "who needs defense attorneys when we have prosecutors" level of madness.

If anyone is looking for an expert opinion that breaks with the "free trade is good for everyone all of the time lah dee dah" consensus, Trade Wars are Class Wars by Klein & Pettis is a good read.

> This is legitimate cost benefit analysis not bellyfeel. People are aware of the increased cost associated with it.

Are they? Because I would expect far less complaining about the economy if this were true.

You can't rebuild an industrial base overnight. Industrial supply chains and cultures of expertise take time to take root. That means not just some abstract incurred cost, but a very much felt burden on the average citizen. And with a weakened economy, it's difficult to see how this industrial base is supposed to materialize exactly.

I think many or most tariff supporters aren't actually aware of the costs - because reasonable cost benefit analysis doesn't come out in their favor even a little. Among economists, this is basically a settled question.

Hell, many tariff supporters still think tariffs are paid by the importers. Many are unaware that tariffs are likely to cost manufacturing jobs in the long run rather than bring them back.

You can use tariffs as a stick but you should also use a carrot. Hard to argue that trump didn't do tariffs in the dumbest way possible.

Nah I think a lot of it is "own the libs" but this is a foreign perspective.