The people in cities and in blue states made this economic turn around happen. Trump does not deserve the credit he will claim. Burn it down.
Edit: If you leave this thread learning anything please let it be this one thing. Organic political movement isn’t schemed up in a board room or carefully planned and executed every step of the way. It starts inside of you and people like you and you lend your support not knowing the outcome but believing in the cause. If it’s not here, it’s not here. I don’t mean to supply you with fuel needed but only the spark to ignite flame waiting to be ignited.
I’m out though.
Something I just thought of today…
Industry has been outsourcing for more than 40 years now. Manufacturing has been gutted in the US, and that’s wrecked labor. With the loss of the power of organized labor, money has flowed up from the workers to the executives. We’ve seen labor unions making big gains under Biden, but there simply aren’t enough people covered by unions in the US to reverse this trend. Right now we have a smallish-number of higher-paid information workers, a somewhat larger number of people in manufacturing, and a LOT of people in service-sector jobs that aren’t organized, or can’t effectively organize. An economy built largely around large numbers of low-wage service-sector jobs, with a small number of higher paid information workers just isn’t sustainable.
Tariffs that went on long enough would force manufacturing to be done in the US. And wages would have to rise, because if the workers can’t afford the products they make, then an economy collapses completely (unless you are exporting a lot). Yeah, it would be super-rough until factories were back in the US, maybe 10+ years. But our thirst for more and cheaper plastic shit from Asia is gonna be the death of us. (…That is, if climate change doesn’t do it first.) In that respect, Trump is kind of right, but the tariffs are probably going to be so harmful in the short run that people will reject any attempts to restructure the economy. I don’t think that Trump is principled in this at all; I think that it’s populist, and he’s a broken clock on this issue.
When the tariff is on final consumer products, these are two opposing forces. Higher wages mean companies would more likely save money by paying the tariffs. Higher tariffs mean companies are more likely to purchase domestically.
But if the tariffs are on precursor products (e.g. steel, lumber, oil, etc …) rather than final consumer goods: the tariffs make it more expensive for domestic manufacturing. The US manufacturer has to pay the tariffs to use the materials they need to produce their final product, and have to pass those costs on. That means there’s less margin for wages.
Yes, definitely. It also forces the US to exploit more natural resources (which I oppose, since I like having forests and mountains). Things like 100% tariffs on electric cars or computer chips made in China would help the US catch up. Tariffs on lithium–I don’t think we have significant lithium deposits in the US–would just sharply raise prices. Tariffs on finished goods that are high enough make it cheaper to produce in the US.