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Comment by tlogan | Hacker News Reader

> products we couldn’t manufacture ourselves even if we wanted to, since the vendor has well-deserved IP protections

Tariffs are working as intended: if somebody can manufacture similar things here they will be in advantage.

This isn’t an endorsement of tariffs, just an observation: their goal is to give domestic manufacturers an edge when similar goods can be made locally. In that sense, they’re functioning exactly as intended.

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It would make a lot more sense to boil the frog over a long period of time with steady, scheduled increases in tariffs instead of pouring scalding water on everyone's heads all at once. Even with plenty of capital and willpower and know how, it takes plenty of time for industry to be built out. Under ideal conditions, even, these tariffs are harmful (and we don't have ideal conditions).

It is if it’s part of a strategy. The oafish nature of this expression of one man and his whack pack of losers surrounding him is beyond that.

I’m doing what most people who can are - freezing capital spend, unwinding positions and contracts that will be hit and planning for the inevitable crash in the fall. The companies that rely on advertising for revenue are going to be purging workforce — there nothing to sell.

Ironically the idiots rallying for the clown will be hardest hit when the farms loans are due and the cotton and soybeans are rotting in the fields.

They will be bailed out at everyone else's expense like they were in his first term.

> if somebody can manufacture similar things here they will be in advantage.

They can't and it's not worth the multi-year effort to start up a factory to do so. That's why these tariffs are so dumb, they aren't protecting US manufacturers, they are just hurting consumers needlessly.

Even for things that are manufactured in the US, the products they make are still going to be more expensive than untariffed goods manufactured in China. The point of tariffs is that manufacturing is cheaper in other countries and so domestic manufacturers can't compete on price, so the tariffs add onto foreign prices until they're above domestic manufacturing prices. So even if magically there was a factory in the US tomorrow for every product manufactured in China, prices would still be higher with the tariffs than without

Companies aren't going to invest 4+ years to get a supply-chain setup in the US when they can just wait for the next administration to roll these back. It's just needless economic turbulence.

> if somebody can manufacture similar things here

Gotta pay tariffs on the machines to manufacture the stuff first.

And the raw materials. Oh I guess just start a mining operation, and a refining operation, and...

Yeah and then all we'll have to do is build a multi-dimensional teleporter so that we can go to an alternate timeline where the US has all minerals it needs in it's earth.

So just a few steps and we'll be good.

Your statement there implies that the intention is related to such a price point.

I suspect that's wrong, and that they didn't even try to calculate those price points, which will vary per kind of good, not per country. If the per-country tariffs happen to match those unknown numbers they didn't even try to calculate, that can't be due to intention, it can only be dumb luck.

There are no domestic manufacturers for the majority of things tariffed.

And for things that can not be manufactured or grown here... we just suck it up and pay the extra 10-20-30% anyway?

If the 'intent' was to spur manufacturing, you'd enact laws with long term financial stability planned in. Few are going to commit to spending millions equipping factories when the 'tariff moat' that might make those factories sustainable will go away if Trump sees a movie in six weeks that says tariffs are bad.

The 'intent' seems to be to create financial instability and chaos, to allow Trump to position himself as the financial savior, and we are concentrating huge amounts of economic power in the hands of a single person.

Especially when the legal basis these tarriffs are based on is a sham of

They are temporary emergency powers with a limited timeframe. The emergency is fake, Congress has declared the calendar is suspended for purposes of the clock running on these temporary "emergency" powers.

The tariff could disappear any day if Congress grows even the flimsiest spine.

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