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Comment by jarym | Hacker News Reader

My best understanding of the administration's psyche is that they're determined to have more manufacturing happen in the US - regardless of the economic impact.

It still doesn't make sense though - there's a reason sneaker makers like to have kids in places like Vietnam make shoes for a few cents per hour. It's because no one in the US would work gruelling hours for such little pay!

POTUS wants to 'level the field' but I'm not convinced it's dawned on him that as leader of one of the wealthiest nations on Earth, 'levelling' will mean the US getting poorer.

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More manufacturing will move to the US, but they're about to get a real-time lesson in Econ 101 in the form of the destruction of their country as they abandon comparative advantage and achieve autarky, joining the illustrious club of North Korea.

Also would require near-certainty that these conditions will last far, far longer than 4 years (or 4 days, per earlier tariff tantrums). Especially for the most important industries like semiconductors, steel, oil, which require massive capex.

You said the most important part. Trump and Co believes that a car or semi factories grow overnight like mushrooms in the forest. If a CEO of a semiconductor company would decide to start building a billion dollar plant in the USA, which would take 6-8 years to built, knowing that new President from the other much different party might take over in less than 4 years, that CEO would probably endup being sued by shareholders for jeopardizing the company's bottom line.

Noone in their right mind will start building factories in USA because of temporary tariffs that all might go away with an executive order and a stroke of a pen comes January 2029.

Or might go away in May 2025, after whatever foreign leader or competitor bought enough $TRUMP, or rented sufficient luxury hotel rooms.

They used to work that way in the US! Then came the labor protections.

Labor conditions are a prisoners dilemma. Individuals in a location can’t really choose to opt out of poor labor conditions if that is what exists there. That is why it took a lot of activism in America to change the labor conditions.

So right now we are exploiting people in places that don’t have the same protections. The comparative advantage of those places is in allowing suffering, not in the people actually being more okay with the conditions.

Yes, that's why Florida is considering bringing back child labor - https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/25/business/florida-child-labor-....

no, they just like tariff. Listen to trump: he thinks the trade deficit is the fiscal deficit if you listen to the words he actually says

> It's because no one in the US would work gruelling hours for such little pay!

There are entire towns in the US where nearly everyone is unemployed since the manufacturing dried up.

I would happily pay a few more dollars more per sneaker if it meant those people could have a job, and it meant my purchase went toward making someone's life here better.

> levelling' will mean the US getting poorer

It was never about being rich (maybe in a silicon valley bubble it is) but these people need jobs not only to live but for personal fulfillment. The fact that you are contributing positively to society.

Not everyone wants to collect welfare or unemployment and do nothing for the rest of their life. It causes serious mental health issues and why the 'opioid epidemic' has ravaged these small former-manufacturing towns.

People are hungry for work because they want to be part of society.

I find it hard to sympathize, given how much work there is in this country.

People cross the southern border illegally without knowing the local language and with close to no skills and still get jobs, build families and give a chance to prosper to their offspring.

I'm not saying there's no hardship anywhere in the US, but rather that the US has so much richness as a whole that these towns you talk about should be going out of their way to find job elsewhere in the US.

Its how urbanization works and has been the trend for a long time. There's no reason why every geographic location has to have a booming economy.

Though every human should have the ability and right to move where the economic boom is happening.

> People cross the southern border illegally without knowing the local language and with close to no skills and still get jobs, build families and give a chance to prosper to their offspring.

Those people work jobs with illegally bad working conditions and illegally low salaries.

Most don't, though. Most even pay taxes, though they don't receive welfare benefits of those taxes.

I think you can make an argument that the minimum wage is too low, but it's hard to argue that the salary they take is illegal.

The problem is more that the companies want to keep their insane profit margin. They could produce in the US, pay workers more and sell for the same price.

But thats less revenue for the company. Less shareholder value. Less bonus for CEOs.

The problem is the hyper capitalism which we have for the past 50 years that every company needs more and more profits.

You plan to retire. Do you invest in something growing at n% or n+1%? If your company can't get a similar return, your company doesn't get investment.

It isn't "hyper" capitalism, it is just capitalism and competition for investment.

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