No shit.
This is literally in the first paragraph of every economics textbook when they talk about tariffs.
How do you get by in life without reading? I mean, don’t you have to know what the symbols on clocks mean to tell time?
And you don’t need a textbook to understand how the very basics of business work. You know, the thing people seem convinced he understands? A fucking toddler has more knowledge than Trump. The United States of America doesn’t have two brain cells to rub together
They heard lower taxes, and simply misunderstood that tariffs are another form of taxation.
No, the first page is how it introduces inefficiencies into a supply/demand equilibrium, resulting in a lower quantity supplied and at a higher price.
No one who every studies economics, even in passing, would even consider another country paying a tarrif for something you buy. The concept is just… what?
Yeah, the, misguided, idea is that the increase in price from imports will drive domestic production, of those things, as the high prices reduce demand, and cut into profit margins. This used to be something that was a sensible assumption of what would happen. However the contemporary world has far too much infrastructure for tariffs to truly work like that any longer. It will, usually, be cheaper to increase the costs for the tariffs, than to restructure back to domestic production.
It could drive up domestic production, however there us a good reason we import, which is similar to your last point.
Bad example, but its the same reason you “import” Mexican workers - their skills and work ethic, along with willingness to work long hours for low wages. You aren’t going to get hundreds of thousands of Americans to decide to work in a sweat shop, or on farms, or doing handyman work for the same wages.
I was going to mention the low cost of a life in China, and the lax H&S, ethic and environmental regulations, but America is trending that way too.
My friend just got into a fight with some MAGATs on facebook about why we need things like civics education so we know what we’re voting for.
You’ll be shocked to learn the MAGATs called him a communist for daring to want to educate them. They don’t even want to open the textbook let alone read it.
It doesn’t even matter:
https://www.axios.com/2024/11/18/consumer-confidence-trump-republicans-white-house
Turns out, a lot of consumer mood is literally just people’s social media feeds. Even if prices go up and QoL goes down, on average, consumers might feel better simply because Trump being in office makes them feel good.
I am not going to point out how monumentally problematic this is… Nope. There’s definitely no bad precedent for that.
But the question is, will American manufacturing make up for the costs? Or, will American manufacturing just raise their prices to match the tariffs and lump the profits into their executive bonuses. They deserve it after all for being smart enough to raise prices.
American manufacturing CAN’T, it would take years, decades honestly, to get back the capacity to make all the crap we’ve outsourced to other countries.
And this is the absolute brain rot fantasy of tariffs that I keep explaining to these idiots, and keep getting blank stares or awkward silences.
Tariffs are 100% punitive, without a domestic/alternative sourcing strategy. They can work long term to reduce a foreign nation’s competitive advantage in an industry while allowing a domestic industry space to exist, but that only works if there’s a domestic industry that already exists (at enough scale to meet demand) or a long term government program to nurture and build those industries - education/vocation training, regulatory concerns, infrastructure development, raw materials availability, etc
Tariffs Chinese steel/electronics/machine tools/etc into oblivion? Either buy the imported at a high price, or buy the domestic at a slightly less high price - but the cost is always carried by the consumer no matter what.
And they want to kill the CHIPS act, which was going to build some of that local supply.
This is largely accurate unfortunately. A good example is Apple. They tried to make a high-end desktop computer manufactured in the US. To do this they needed a specific type of screw. In the area near their factory, they only found one machine shop that could make the screw and they could guarantee an output of 50 screws per day after a 3 week lead time to tool up. And that was the final offer.
When they finally moved to China, they submitted the same request. Multiple vendors appeared offering thousands of screws per day and if they wanted to place a bigger order the company would set up a new factory just to produce those screws and could output tens or hundreds of thousands per day depending on requirements.
Another example is the iPhone and Gorilla Glass. There were a few Chinese companies in the running to manufacture the glass panel that would go on top of the phone. The one that got the contract, in anticipation of getting the contract, had already purchased the machine to form the glass and had samples ready for inspection at the contract signing.
We have allowed our business climate to become so bogged down in red tape and liability and lawyers and insurance, that most American companies are simply unable to execute at the same speed as China when it comes to manufacturing.
I would absolutely love to get more manufacturing back in the US. But the process of outsourcing is not going to get unwound overnight. It took two decades to move everything to China, even if the whole country agreed that was a mistake it would take another two decades to bring it back. Because as the Apple screws demonstrate, it’s not just about the factory that produces the widget. It’s about everything that goes into that factory, the companies that make the parts and the screws and the plastic. When you deal with China, they are all right there and they are all ready to go. Same can’t be said for the US.
I was sorta on board until you blamed regulations as a reason businesses can’t have manufacturering I. The US.
Regulations are written in blood. Stop pretending like a living wage and no slave labor is a bad tbi g inhibiting production.
Tarrif the snot out of the slave wage countries.
If some other countries are any indication, not only will they raise the prices but they will raise it way more than the tariffs and just blame on tariffs and with time people will just think that is the way it is. “X cost 3 times as other countries? That is because the tariffs” no mind that the tariffs is like 50% and not 300%. Like they already do with gas prices. Gas go up immediately when oil prices rise but only goes down, if ever, for new stock.
During his first term Trump put a tariffs on Washing Machines. The price of imported washing machines went up. The price of domestically manufactured washing machines was also raised. Even the price of dryers — which didn’t have a tariff — went up on both imported and domestically manufactured appliances.
I have yet to see an economist that thinks Trumps tariff plans will benefit the working class.
Those prices entirely rebounded by the end of 2019. Thats how tariffs work. It became more expensive to import, companies slowly replaced imports with cheaper local goods, the cost settles.
There are surely instances where it didnt rebound entirely but thats not one of them.
That doesn’t change that putting the tariff in place was a stupid idea that didn’t help anyone. Rebounding after the removal of the tariff doesn’t undo the damage done while it was in place.
It’s a certainty, not a fucking "likelihood’. That’s how they work.
You mean there’s no chance that Wal-Mart might choose to absorb the increased prices out of the goodness of their hearts? :o
I feel like no one bothered to campaign against Trump… until… AFTER he won
