Ricardo's comparative advantage result is contingent on the assumption that capital is not mobile across borders. This was a good assumption in 1817. Is it a good assumption today?

Furthermore, he's very up front about this in On the Principles, and from this information you can calculate the exact number of people who read the damn thing between the person repeating the talking point and the person originating the talking point.

> The present understanding is that the tale's moral supports team effort and recognition of the vital part that all members play in it. In more authoritarian times, however, the fable was taken to affirm direction from the centre.

Oof.

It’s reasonable to want to bring back american manufacturing. But the random, temper-tantrum, market-manipulation tariffs are not going to do that. America isn’t going to all of a sudden produce tonnes and tonnes of xmas decorations every year just because of a 50% tariff on all chinese goods that may or may not be around in 6 months. All that’s going to happen is xmas decorations are going to be more expensive.

An actual plan would be targeting specific industries where america has the ability to scale up, and having congress pass tariffs that slowly ramp up over time to allow a smooth transition.

Your framing is ridiculous. Canada sends raw materials to the USA and purchases it back once transformed. If anyone has been bleeding it is Canada.

Yes, by all means, figure out how to reshore American production of potash, aluminum and heavy crude near northern refineries.

It's just an immensely dumb policy.

Unless we plan on manufacturing our own shoes and clothes, competitive advanced manufacturing is going to require cheap industrial inputs from around the world.

I think the whole trade deficit argument to be beyond stupid.

1. Sending machinery, food, equipment in exchange of pieces of paper with national heroes printed on them should make you think who's benefitting really from the deficit

2. This is the 21st century, you can't ignore services. How many Office and Adobe licenses, credit card transactions, Netflix subscriptions, Hollywood movies and shows, advertisement space online, US companies sells and it doesn't enter the trade argument?

Put differently, Trump is explicitly attempting to destroy the reason the American stock market generally goes up.

Or a gun, because America is famous for its gun culture, and it would be more clearly "shooting yourself in the foot".

Actually you, like most of us, have a trade deficit with the grocery store and the movie theater, and a trade surplus with your employer. Which one is more enjoyable to have?

It also excludes money spent on services, which in most cases favours the US.

Also, Trumps argument always ignores the bulk of US economy and exports: services.

Somehow we count shoes and timber but not gazzilions in financial and cloud services.

Tariffs (and retaliatory tariffs) can be universally economically negative and still be rationally pursued by individual politicians.

For example: if Donald Trump tariffs the country you are in charge of, you are likely willing to pay the economic cost of a retaliatory tariff to seem like you are standing up to America to your constituents. The politician’s goal is to be re-elected.

The politician may aim to deter getting tariffed in the first place, and promising a retaliatory tariff if another country tariffs you first is also reasonable as a deterrent from a game-theoretical perspective.

All it takes is for one world leader to not understand or care about the clear economic negatives to tariffs to start the chain: everyone else can be a rational actor.

That’s true and entirely irrelevant to the actual dynamics of the metaphor.

But I’m glad you had a chance to feel like a clever little boy

That’s the whole trick: if the feedback cycle is long enough, the next person gets blamed for it, not the current.

I think the 'tariffs' in this comic are related to the current regimes application of them. Not representative of tariffs as a whole.

Economists universally think tariffs are dumb policy.

https://kentclarkcenter.org/surveys/steel-and-aluminum-tarif...

Literally 100% of the 50 expert economists polled by the Kent Clark Center think tariffs overall make Americans worse off.

Nobody in politics can say this simple truth because the rust belt states are critical swing states.

The doctor hits my leg with a hammer to test my reflexes. The comic isn't saying hitting legs with hammers is always bad.

I think the comic captures that nuance by exaggerating the stupidity of the trump tariffs. If your trade strategy is "we must eliminate all trade deficits" youre gonna have a bad time

I don't really have any idea if tariffs are good or bad. What I do know is that just announcing that they will go into effect with very little notice and then they won't go into effect and then they do but then they are decalared illegal because they weren't passed through the official methods isn't good.

Economists universally think tariffs are dumb policy.

https://kentclarkcenter.org/surveys/steel-and-aluminum-tarif...

Literally 100% of the 50 expert economists polled by the Kent Clark Center think tariffs overall make Americans worse off.

Nobody in politics can say this simple truth because the rust belt states are critical swing states.

> The only difference is to what degree they wield the tariff hammer, and in which direction it is swung.

Which is a huge difference. Targetted tariffs can induce compliance with desired trade practices and influence purchasing towards more desirable sources.

Global blanket tariffs on products without domestic sources of substitute goods is effective for increasing domestic prices and encouraging foreign producers to enhance their ex-US trade networks.

If you wanted to encouage local manufacturing, you would add tariffs on finished goods, but leave raw materials untariffed. You might consider tariffing raw materials with ample local capacity. You might carefully consider tariffs for machine tools and other finshed goods which are necessary for manufacturing where there's not current local production capacity.

You might consider reciprocal tarrifs that were actually reciprocal tariffs... you tarrif me, I tariff you. Not tarrifs on countries that have an export surplus because they can't afford to import goods from the US.

> The only difference is to what degree they wield the tariff hammer, and in which direction it is swung.

You are ignoring a massive difference. Trump wants balanced trade with each individual country. Pretty much everyone else who wants the US to reduce or eliminate its trade deficit just wants that to apply to total trade, not to each individual country.

The main reason money was invented was so you don't have to have balanced trade with each individual trading partner.

What is booking.com doing that violates DSA?

> The only difference is to what degree they wield the tariff hammer, and in which direction it is swung.

I mean that's the point, no? Swing the hammer carefully at a nail or with maximum force at your own leg?

Or to drop the metaphor - much of the difference between good and bad policy is a difference in degree. So your counterargument here is valid against "all tariffs are bad" but I believe the point most are making is "the current admin's use of tariffs is bad" which makes your counter appear as a bad-faith mischaracterization.

> The Biden admin went after Canada repeatedly for unfair trade practices […]

What were these practices?

The other difference is the legality of it. Trump is trying to do all this at his personal order, without Congress. And he's trying to jump through all kinds of shenanigans to do so.

For example, he declared a state of emergency about fentanyl, and used that as cover to create tariffs toward every country on earth. That, obviously, has nothing to do with fentanyl; it's just a smoke screen.

He wants to rule by decree. Biden didn't do that. (OK, didn't do it to anything like the same degree. I'm sure someone can find an example where he did. It still wasn't like this.)

> completely destroys small business

Citation needed, I'm in the EU and there is small business

1985

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaza_Accord

The United States proposed a deal to France, Germany, Japan, and Britain (the G5): you buy up your own currencies, the dollar falls, and in return we reduce our budget deficit, meaning you no longer have to effectively finance U.S. development.

The United States agreed to reduce its budget deficit and lower interest rates. The other parties to the agreement committed to raising theirs. In addition, West Germany agreed to cut taxes, while Japan agreed to allow the yen to appreciate. As a result, over the following two years the U.S. dollar fell by 46% against the German mark and by 50% against the yen. However, the U.S. government ultimately failed to reduce its budget deficit. Meanwhile, the sharp appreciation of the yen made Japanese exporters less competitive in foreign markets. In the United States, by contrast, the period following the agreement saw substantial economic growth and low inflation.

A classic American move: promise the world — we’re all in this together, we’re marching toward a brighter future — and then screw everyone over.

Economists universally think tariffs are dumb policy.

https://kentclarkcenter.org/surveys/steel-and-aluminum-tarif...

Literally 100% of the 50 expert economists polled by the Kent Clark Center think tariffs overall make Americans worse off.

Nobody in politics can say this simple truth because the rust belt states are critical swing states.

Tariffs are bad unless you’re a domestic producer of a good that has just been tariffed, and now you have less competition and can raise your prices.

Here buddy, you dropped this straw.

The comic satirizes the 2026 US tariff rationale, vs. worker protection tariffs. But I do often think about Noam Chomsky's opposition to NAFTA[0] when talking heads explain why tariffs are bad.

[0]: <https://chomsky.info/secrets03/>

"If a nation works 6 days a week, 12 hours a shift then obviously they will outcompete any nation where people work 5 days a week for 8 hours." - This is not obviously true to me, can you explain why it is for you?

> Protecting workers from that kind of competition seems fair. Tariffs aren't bad in itself. They are just a tool.

At the cost of consumers paying for goods/services?

Your take is as reductive as the take in the comics.

People in a nation working 5 days a week for 8 hours are getting paid less and less over time. Heck lot of people now need double shifts to make ends meet totaling up to 12 hr or even more. They can only afford a Christmas light from the nation mass producing it by working 6 days a week, 12 hr shift.

And lets not pretend this was only about protecting workers. There were multiple agendas:

1. Bring back jobs 2. Remove trade barriers between countries 3. Make US rich by collecting huge amount of tariffs

All three can't be true at the same time. If jobs are brought back then you aren't going to collect huge amount of tariffs because nothing is being produced outside. If trade barriers are removed then that comes at a cost of slashing tariffs so you can't really collect huge amount of tariffs.

The foolish reasoning highlighted in the comics is the reason there is so much trade war.

Just as a note: if you work 6x12 shifts, you're actually working less efficiently, because you'll be regularly fatigued, make more mistakes, need more rework, etc etc. You might end up with the same net yield as if you'd done 3x6 hour shifts.

(edit: And only if you don't fall asleep at the controls and destroy the factory first. 12 hour shifts are brutal. At least one place I know bans you the next day if you exceed 11h, for your own protection if nothing else)

(edit2: This was documented in the 1st world war when munitions factories that tried to ramp up by increasing shift durations past a certain point ended up hardly improving productivity, but did increase accident and sickness rates to the point that it was starting to hurt the war effort. )

> This is a pretty reductive take.

Yes, because it's a one-panel comic.

Have you ever heard of comparative advantage?

That is a ... pretty reductive take as well.

I don't think the comic is claiming that all tariffs in any context are bad, that would indeed be a reductive, bad take.

Given the timing and the metaphor of blood being sent to and from a limb, this is almost surely a reference to the tariff threats against Canada.

Unfortunately in our hyper partisan, sound bite, climate you can’t discuss the trade offs of tax policies anymore you either support the party line or you’re the enemy.

My dad worked 12 hour shifts for decades (4 days on, 4 days off). Anyone working 72 hours a week isn't going to last long.

I never realized I've been working this much.

Economists universally think tariffs are dumb policy.

https://kentclarkcenter.org/surveys/steel-and-aluminum-tarif...

Literally 100% of the 50 expert economists polled by the Kent Clark Center think tariffs overall make Americans worse off.

Nobody in politics can say this simple truth because the rust belt states are critical swing states.

Tarrifs are the worst decision a politician can make.

The main reason we have open-ish border for people and goods is to reduce the risk of war. You are not going to wage war with a country that do business with.

This undermines this idea.

You act as if it's the countries that are doing the trading; it's not. It is the businesses and other entities within the countries that are doing it. They are doing it because it benefits them. If a company is doing overseas manufacturing it is because they benefit and it isn't the United States that made that decision.

It also seems to ignore the companies and individuals that got rich because they chose to move jobs overseas.