Why Does Trump Love Tariffs?
futureandwealth.substack.com
futureandwealth.substack.com
Millions of lost jobs, millions of better, easier, higher value jobs created.
Unemployment rate is extremely low and has been except for a few years of the Great Recession.
>Traditional economic models assume fair play.
Why? It has never been fair play. The US has the world's biggest military and they push countries around for economic gains. The US has historically installed dictators as long as the they side with the US.
>But if the aim is rebuilding industries, protecting workers, and rebalancing global power, tariffs start to look like a strategic necessity.
No one in America wants to work in factories anymore. Unemployment is already extremely low. Where are you going to find workers to slave away in a factory in America? Illegal immigrants?
>Millions of lost jobs, millions of better, easier, higher value jobs created.
Partially true. But look at many of the rust belt towns now. High unemployment, opioid addictions. Has that been a fair outcome for them? Is it ok to leave them behind in exchange for some of these "higher value jobs"?
>Why? It has never been fair play. The US has the world's biggest military and they push countries around for economic gains. The US has historically installed dictators as long as the they side with the US.
Exactly my point. It has never been fair play. Hence the traditional approach to evaluating tariffs does not always work.
>No one in America wants to work in factories anymore. Unemployment is already extremely low. Where are you going to find workers to slave away in a factory in America? Illegal immigrants?
Not entirely true. Many of those workers who would traditionally work in factories are now in low wage service jobs with little job security or prospect for earnings growth.
They'll need to re-invent themselves. The entire country can't be tailored to save a few towns in the rust belt. I know those states hold a lot of power because they're swing states.
>Exactly my point. It has never been fair play. Hence the traditional approach to evaluating tariffs does not always work.
That we agree. It was never a free market. It was always who had the biggest guns and point them at people standing in the way of your economic goals.
>Not entirely true. Many of those workers who would traditionally work in factories are now in low wage service jobs with little job security or prospect for earnings growth.
Seems like you've never been inside a factory making lower value goods. You're thinking of coushy factories making Mercedes Benz. I'm thinking of factories mass producing pens. You know. The other stuff Trump wants to tariff.
Maybe tariffs can work better for America. But your reasons are unconvincing.
Tariffs are a tax, plain and simple --- paid directly to the US government by US importers and manufacturers who are ultimately reimbursed by consumers (you and me).
Huge new tariffs amount to nothing more than a massive tax increase combined with huge price increases (aka a spike in inflation) --- a double hit to the economy.
Show me a country that has ever taxed it's way to greatness.