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Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

I would like to point out the administration's accomplishments in the last two weeks (shamelessly copied from Matt Stoller's recent piece "This Is What Governing Looks Like")

* Banned non-compete agreements for 40 million workers

* Raised overtime wages for 4 million salaried workers

* Forced airlines to automatically offer refunds for canceled flights and poorly handled baggage

* Banned illegal junk fees in mortgage lending

* Forced divestment of TikTok from Chinese ownership

* Blocked corporate merger in insulation

* Filed to block a corporate merger in fashion

* Announced tariff increases on steel to protect domestic producers

* Announced an end to the duty free period on Chinese solar panels to encourage U.S. manufacturing.

* Passed the first Federal privacy law to stop data brokers from selling sensitive information to China and Russia

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> * Passed the first Federal privacy law to stop data brokers from selling sensitive information to China and Russia

At the risk of sounding dismissive, I'd much rather they banned the selling of sensitive information. Full stop. China and Russia have much less reach into my day-to-day than any of the other buyers much closer to home like a local gov't bodies let alone private corps.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40203558

I'm doing this first thing in the morning, thank you!

> * Announced an end to the duty free period on Chinese solar panels to encourage U.S. manufacturing.

> * Announced tariff increases on steel to protect domestic producers

These are bad things.

Why?

Because these tarifs do more harm than benefit.

The harm is diffused among many, the benefits accumulates to a few.

https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/federal/section-232-t...

It is a national defense and manufacturing supply chain security premium. You might call that harm if you're optimizing the for the lowest cost possible, but that is not good policy in the current geopolitical climate.

Most of it needs backed up by Congress or it'll just go away given a few administrations.

> Announced tariff increases on steel to protect domestic producers

The Trump Admin went after China far more than Biden has so far, the Democrats were overwhelmingly silent about how that qualified as impressive governing. He needs to do a lot more to bolster US labor and US manufacturing, it's not even a good start yet.

Mostly people don’t give praise because Trump’s protectionism was largely ineffective and a large tax increase on working Americans.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_tariffs

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