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Comment by anothernewdude | Hacker News Reader

No corporation is building a factory based on a policy that has a lifetime of four years.

3-4 years is a LONG time in business. I do not know how long the tariffs will last. Maybe they will come to a deal next week maybe not. but if they stick around businesses will move stuff to the us. I'm saying this as an EU citizen.

3-4 years is a very short time for developing land in the US, anywhere near population centers. You’re looking at that much time just to get permitting done, optimistically.

3-4 years is not long at all in this context. Most places take that long to get permits, and additional years to build the factories, and additional years to even become profitable and self sustainable in ideal circumstances.

It's not a long time if you're talking making massive capital investments into things like new factories or capacity.

Your second sentence indicates the more significant problem though, because that uncertainty on timelines makes even the 3-4 year time horizon questionable. Nobody is going to invest anything based on tariffs that may go away or change next week and the only way you can tell if they're sticking around is waiting so long you don't have time to make the investment any more.

It might be different if Trump came in with a clear, transparent tariff plan on day one. But they're already all over the place and being implemented in extremely unpredictable ways. Some people might argue his unpredictability is an asset in general, but it's absolutely not in this case.

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