>I won't defend these tariffs, or their rollout. But I will say that our dependence on Chinese manufacturing (and engineering, these days) is not good for our nation.
How would you solve it differently?
How would you solve it differently?
This is also why you pass the tariffs through the legislature and not via some literal "emergency" order, which means that the tariffs could disappear at literally any point, and probably will if things get bad. So what's the point of investment if you have a better than 50-50 chance and you're going to feel the pain either way?
It's just exactly the opposite way anyone who is seriously trying to shift manufacturing would go about doing it. There is also some strong dollar issues, but that's really complicated.
There is no overnight solve at this point. But a solution would be working to help countries with more friendly government to your own to build up their manufacturing with the promise of guaranteed business to help prop it up by moving away from the hostile government.
In other countries we are scared of, not friendly too, the USA
Of course as other comments in the thread have pointed out: a much smarter way to roll out tariffs to encourage domestic manufacturing is by slowing ramping them up to give industry time to react.
My lathe was $3400. A week later the price is now $4000 thanks to tariffs. There are no domestic manufacturers left and banks/Wall Street aren't going to finance someone spinning up a machine tools company. The difference in price isn't enough to erase China's excessive subsidies to their industry combined with their lower labor pay rates so even if someone did try to compete they still couldn't match $4000. My best guess is more like $6-7k. In the end all the tariffs are doing is making it more difficult to get into machining.
If idiots and sycophants weren't steering the ship the US would have a state-run investment bank that partnered with private capital to offer investments to anyone who wanted to start a business. Frankly I think there is lots of opportunity in various spaces like machine tools to make innovative products at all scales from the small hobbyist to big industrial shops. It won't be a 1000x return though so no one cares.
In defense of the comment you're responding to: measures like making it impossible to compete by subsidizing their domestic competition. (I wasn't trying to suggest China and others do not use tariffs)
Fwiw this sounds like an aspect of fascism. Just defining, not criticizing. It clearly works for China.
Can you explain that?
Not expecting a positive effect from that from this administration, but in theory there could be one. Like that investment bank. Or just lowered taxes.
The US "dependence" on Chinese manufacturing is not a problem at all. It's mostly just a wedge/scapegoat/distraction issue to placate constituents who have faced decades of declining general welfare due mostly to domestic policy and not trade issues.
For example, trade policy with China didn't force the government to lower taxes on the wealthy to cut public college funding (college used to be free in California, where do y'all think Silicon Valley's innovations came from?), refuse to implement single-payer universal healthcare, or refuse to address the housing affordability crisis.