It's not like I don't understand the argument on the other side of this. I've heard it my entire life. It's been dominant since the late 1970s and 1980s.

It's just that it's wrong.

We need a competent industrial policy and support for skilled labor and policies that encourage domestic production.

I'm not sure if you've noticed, but our country has become fucked, overwhelmed by financialization, scams, monopoly rents and extraction, and all of the wealth accumulating to a handful of people, while we've become less resilient and, at this point, almost certainly have lost our place as the most dominant economy and industrial power in the world.

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ceejayoz 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> We need a competent industrial policy and support for skilled labor and policies that encourage domestic production.

Yes!

But "tariff/ban BYD" is not that.

	▲	CPLX 11 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Of course it is part of an industrial policy. It is, however, not nearly sufficient, and if it's the only thing we do, it will become increasingly untenable and eventually fail. But it's an essential first step to prevent our audio industry from just being summarily destroyed. Other steps are also needed to encourage domestic manufacturing and homegrown successes. Also, I'm not sure why this is even controversial. Why do you think there's BMW and Hyundai plants in the American South? Tariffs are already heavily employed by us and every other industrialized country.

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mindslight 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

IMO the problem is that we've been given the excuse of market fundamentalism for the past several decades on the way down, as most everyone lost their middle class jobs, wages stagnated, etc. Now we're supposed to accept some last ditch attempt at protectionism based on directly blocking choices for consumers, when the US manufacturers aren't even really competing? It just seems like open hypocrisy. At this point the reasonable protectionist policy would be based around subsidizing American industry so that they become competitive options, not merely trying to keep the better foreign options out.

	▲	CPLX 11 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Every single load of bullshit shuffled into our faces has been presented as a benefit to consumers. Google gives away their search and Gmail for free, don't you know? So it can't possibly be a monopoly. And so on. It's just propaganda. It's bullshit. That's not the way that you determine whether firms have excess market power, and this fraud (called "the consumer welfare standard") was the deliberate choice of right-wing policymakers who were bent on dismantling antitrust policies and succeeded. More: https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-secret-plot-to-unleas...