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.

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smallmancontrov 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

An actual plan would look like the IIJA, IRA, CHIPS Act -- what Biden was doing, but act larger scale. The problem with globalization is not that free trade failed to create a surplus, it's that 150% of the surplus went to capital and -50% went to labor, which can and should be fixed with tax and spend. Instead, of course, we didn't tax capital and we spent the money on stupid wars. That said, good industrial policy includes tariffs too, but Democrats knew this! Biden wasn't allergic to tariffs! The 100% EV tariff (and EV subsidies and battery subsidies) happened during his administration. Aside from the fact that giving Elon everything he wanted was a massive political miscalculation, it was good industrial policy, we just needed more of it in order to affect the macro.

That's the tragedy of it -- Democrats in office understood the macro picture and worked diligently and intelligently to fix it, the spurned labor interests in the MAGA movement understood what had hurt them and correctly rejected it, but the former didn't know how to message to the latter so a demagogue swooped in and here we are.

The gonzo free-trade rhetoric of the Clinton era should never have happened, second best time to get rid of it was 10 years ago before Trump I, third best time was a few years ago before Trump II, but the fourth best time is now.

	▲	jandrewrogers an hour ago \| parent [-]
		An important point is that "capital" is essentially just another way of saying "investment". Investment is what creates opportunities and demand for labor. Strong demand for labor increases wages e.g. construction wages going through the roof because of data center investment. If you disincentivize investment, economic surplus tends to shift toward rent-seeking behavior which creates relatively little labor demand. Many economies in Europe are poster children for this phenomenon. Ideally you want an economy that strongly incentives investment over rent-seeking.

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arwhatever 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Maybe even use the tariff proceeds to provide incentives to those very same domestic industries? (I am not an economist.)

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mindslight 2 hours ago | parent [-]

If that were seriously on the table, we could have just used the proceeds from having the world reserve currency to do that. Instead, their open plan for that national asset is to squander it.

In general, stop trying to steelman the looters. Sometimes a con artist is really just a con artist.

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edgyquant 2 hours ago | parent [-]

From what I understand having the dollar be our main export is a reason why we haven’t had real industrial policy. We export dollars so we have to buy from overseas.

	▲	mindslight an hour ago \| parent [-]
		You're missing the other choices that link those two things. Being able to export dollars lets the government create new dollars out of thin air, which can be traded for real goods and services - a great deal by any measure. But the political mantra of the last thirty years has been a fake "fiscal responsibility" where the government has been stopped from spending that new money for most deliberate purposes, especially on a large scale (eg subsidizing domestic manufacturing in strategic industries). Yet instead of the natural price deflation that true fiscal responsibility would have brought, economists have declared that our currency still needs to inflate. And so the Fed still creates just as many new dollars, but instead gives them away to banks in the form of low interest loans (fueling the ever growing asset bubble, essentially a handout to asset holders). The combination of all of these are what has decimated our industrial base.

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throwaw12 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don't think proposed plan with tariffs will be effective, because once scaled up and generating enough revenue, MBA will come and outsource everything, to make more money

	▲	edgyquant 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Not if you make it extremely costly with tax policy and tariffs.

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epolanski 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> It’s reasonable to want to bring back american manufacturing.

Capitalism produces where it is convenient to do so.

And no politician can change it.

You can try to protect very few critical sectors, but not whole "manufacturing" which by the way keeps rising in US since ever.

What politicians want to sell is the "good old times of well paying manufacturing jobs".

Robots have long come for those.

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close04 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Capitalism is great as long as it works just for you. When others learn to play the game and even outrun you, it’s time to put the finger on the scales. Essence of the free market.

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epolanski 3 hours ago | parent [-]

There isn't much you can do about it, you can't have the cake and eat it too.

If you want to protect your whole "manufacturing", you also need to make peace with the idea that consumer and industrial prices will balloon.

You can only compete, choose your battles, but you can't live in a world that does not exist.

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smallmancontrov 2 hours ago | parent [-]

No, bringing the price of 50" 4k TVs down to $300 does not make up for lost jobs. That's an easy choice, which is why it was never presented to the American worker but rather foisted upon us by shareholders in pursuit of profit and a government content to look the other way.

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epolanski 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

1. For the n-th time: manufacturing jobs are being lost to automation. Globally, not just in America. This is true in Asia as well.

Manufacturing is facing the same fate of agriculture: machines and robots will keep displacing people. Nothing is going to stop it.

2. There is no such world where we'll choose to do things less efficiently to artificially save few jobs. And it's not about your TV being 100$ more expensive, it is about everything you touch and see being considerably more expensive, with a cascade effect on the businesses that need the equipment.

3. Average Joe in US is as much a shareholder as some imaginary person you have in mind. And a company's duty is towards shareholders first, workers second.

	▲	triceratops 42 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Everything you said is objectively true, except for one thing. > a company's duty is towards shareholders first, workers second. This is just like, an opinion, man. There's no reason a company has to be like that. It just benefits company management to act like it's an objective truth because their pay is stock-based.
	▲	anjel 37 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Good thing the birth rate is depressed then

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Hammershaft 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Advanced manufacturing requires cheap global inputs.

Before tariffs, unemployments was ~3.5% and real wages were rising, and part of why wages have been rising is because the cost of goods like TVs have been falling.

	▲	smallmancontrov 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Just because the dumbest president in American History can't do industrial policy doesn't mean that industrial policy can't or shouldn't be done.