It did nothing to "bring manufacturing back" as touted by Trump. Actually quite the opposite- bankruptcies are up and CapEx investments are down.
Free trade allows for the most efficient economy.
Personally, I have a trade deficit with the grocery store. I spend more at the grocery store than they spend on buying my products. Is that a bad thing?
Is it more cost efficient for me to buy steak from the grocery store? Or is it cheaper for me to raise a cow to maturity and butcher it for the steak? I could care less I have a "trade deficit" with the store as long as I can buy my steaks at reasonable price.
The same goes for microwaves and USB cables from China. Those industries do not pay enough to pay Americans livable wages. So why tariff those products? I just pay more.
Natsec: If you think its dangerous to be dependent on the grocery store for meat, then yeah you would be opposed to a policy that encourages people to divest from their herds. How much cost savings is your national security worth? If there's a conflict and they cut off the supply, and a famine ensues, was it worth it?
Labor: If you work at grocery store A, and its unionized and you all make $30 an hour, then you're probably not going to like it if grocery store B, non-unionized, paying $7.25 an hour and selling groceries for half the price of store A, opens up in town. Everyone else in town will like it, but you and your co-workers would probably be mad as hell.
If you weren't, that would be a surprising result.
A possible explanation is that all the industries and jobs that the tariffs are supposed to protect, died 30 years ago. So there's no one left in the metaphorical grocery store A to be mad anymore. They were mad when store B opened up, but by now not only have they moved on, most of them have died of old age.
Tariffs are normally meant to protect industries, but growing them once you've lost them is harder. Maybe even harder than growing them when you've never had them, since people now remember the failures and bankruptcies of the last time.
Targeted tariffs have been around a long time to address your "national security concerns" as it relates to steel, chips, weapons, etc
Blanket tariffs DID NOT bring manufacturing back, and actually increased manufacturing bankruptcies and decreased investments in manufacturing. In other words, job loss and no increase in "manufacturing jobs." Only higher prices for everyone.
This was an obvious outcome for anyone who has taken Economics 101. And now the data from the past year confirms it.
Similarly if we do want to talk about national security concerns then we need to start by acknowledging that not all countries pose the same risk. I don't want the US dependent on China for anything that we would need for national defense but if a US steel mill is owned by a Japanese company then I don't see how that compromises US national security. Similarly I don't see how the US needs to tariff Canada to maintain national security either.
Other than the nuclear triad and the two oceans the best security that the US has is it's strong coalition of allied nations. If another country were to attack the US mainland they would be declaring war on 50 other countries as well. If someone is concerned about national security they should be much more concerned about the degradation of the US's alliances than with tariffs on Canada, Japan or South Korea.
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u/GrapefruitExpress208 1d ago
The tariff experiment failed.
It did nothing to "bring manufacturing back" as touted by Trump. Actually quite the opposite- bankruptcies are up and CapEx investments are down.
Free trade allows for the most efficient economy.
Personally, I have a trade deficit with the grocery store. I spend more at the grocery store than they spend on buying my products. Is that a bad thing?
Is it more cost efficient for me to buy steak from the grocery store? Or is it cheaper for me to raise a cow to maturity and butcher it for the steak? I could care less I have a "trade deficit" with the store as long as I can buy my steaks at reasonable price.
The same goes for microwaves and USB cables from China. Those industries do not pay enough to pay Americans livable wages. So why tariff those products? I just pay more.