To be clear, the current tariff execution is reckless and poorly planned. But I hear a lot of total tariff opposition from the same people who demand we continue to escalate with China over control of Taiwan, up to a potential hot war.
So what’s the plan? Western economies were brought to their knees during just a momentary interruption in shipping during the pandemic. How do you wage a war with a country that does all of your manufacturing? China could defeat most western countries without firing a single shot, just by cutting off their access to Chinese exports.
If you don’t support tariffs to bring back manufacturing jobs domestically, how do you think we could make it through a war with our manufacturing partners? I can’t reconcile the two ideas, and I don’t understand how some of y’all are.
I agree that requiring certain industries to be based domestically is the best route, but both the GOP & Dems opposed that type of planned economy. They prefer to manipulate market influences to incentivize what they want, rather than direct regulation.
If you don’t tariff everyone, how does that bring manufacturing back? They’ll just move to the next cheapest country, and then you’re playing whack-a-mole.
This isn’t what I said at all. What I meant was, for service businesses (eg car dealerships, warehouses, restaurants) and heavy industry (eg oil refineries, plastics and chemicals, composites like wind turbine blades or aircraft fuselages) which practically must remain within the country, support those endeavors by making it easier or cheaper to operate, so that an internal economy for those products develops locally. Trying to force stronger internal ties would inevitably lead to resources and incentives spent where they’re not most needed.
I’m not sure if you saw my Mexico example or not, or purposely chose to ignore it, but manufacturing that moves from China to Mexico would still further a USA policy of reduced economic dependency on China. It doesn’t matter so much that it’s not “Made in USA” so much that it’s not “Made in China”, if that’s the desired economic policy.
And that doesn’t even include the knock-on effects that anchoring the Mexican economy would create: economic migration – when people move from a place of poorer economic condition to a richer economic place – would naturally abate if the Mexican economy grew. Economic opportunity also displaces gang warfare and drug distribution, in part.
The alternative is to apply huge subsidies for manufactures to ignore Mexico and set up shop in the USA, but then the cost of land, labor, and capital is substantially higher, and the products less affordable because they must be higher priced to pay for those means of production. Why do all this when Mexico or Canada are right next door?
Hey, I agree with you entirely, but I’m worried you’re wasting energy arguing with a bot. It doesn’t really seem to understand what you’re saying
I had an inkling that was the case. But I figured that, for my own benefit, I’d elucidate my position a bit more. If it falls on deaf bot ears, then that’s just how it is. There’s not much else I was going to say anyway.
Don’t get me wrong! I appreciate that there are people (like you) are willing and able to shut people like them up
I personally don’t have the energy to argue and I guess I want to help make sure folks like you don’t waste your enegy on bots
Thank you for doing what you do, haha
Thank you for you kind words!
Yeah, everyone who disagrees with you is a bot.
I didn’t choose to ignore anything. I simply don’t agree with the status quo of finding exploitable populations to outsource to, and I don’t agree that shifting problems to a different part of the globe eliminates the problem.
One of the main reasons for mass immigration from Mexico is the exploitation in NAFTA that has had the opposite effect of what you claim, and eliminated upward mobility in Mexico.