Any amount of returning manufacturing here, returning power to the middle class by increasing the demand for labor and stopping the exploitation of foreign workers is a good thing. I can't stand listening to him talk, but if iPhones aren't reliant on slaves mining cobalt and 13 year olds working 12 hours a days I will consider that a win.
I don’t think Americans realize that we haven’t suffered a global war since 1945 precisely because global trade took over and nations’ economies became more interdependent than isolated.
These trade wars are signalling pretty much all countries in the world to become more self-sustaining and less dependent on each other. Countries who succeed will be more confident to enter armed conflict because they’ll have less to lose, and those with lots to gain will have every incentive to start or join a war against those who have resources.
Countries have aligned themselves to maximise Ricardian comparative advantage, and there's no way for the global economy to realign itself towards plain old mercantilism without massive pain for everyone.
The USA is sort of addicted to consumption (where China wants to be actually), you could dissuade a lot of consumption by raising taxes on it (if, for example, you want people to save more and focus only on necessities). It would be a huge change for America though, the market might not survive intact if it happens too quickly.
Ironically, your comment is double-bladed.
This has likely been in the works from when China shook Apple down and the timing has a nice upside that it also pacifies His Orangeness(tm).
Of course Apple didn't do it on their own accord, there was way too much profit to be made from outsourcing to China. Everyone else was doing it, why not also the richest company on earth?
Tomato harvesting is done in an air conditioned tractor these days:
https://m.youtube.com/shorts/pDxZhOw9IH4
https://youtu.be/l4Dc6QNWiIs?si=S9qrFNpUBM5KuSrx
Production on iPhone can be highly automated these days as well. There are plenty of good examples of revitalized computer hardware manufacturing in the U.S. like the Starlink Factory in Bastrop, TX:
https://youtu.be/qz0k4wj_KlA?si=qUqJ0DWTRpHa4cgY
or the TSMC factory in Arizona, which has similar amenities to many software offices:
The reality is our entire economy is more or less fake - it's propped up like a dead body by hyper-consumerism. We rely on buying way more shit than we should, and that, in turn, requires warm bodies who can't live off their wages. This is in high contrast to the economy of the early to mid 20th century.
We can rip that bandaid off, but things would suck for a while, maybe a long time. That's a hard sell - especially since we (not underpaid) get nothing.
2. The tariffs are producing revenue for the Federal government. Hundreds of billions per year. To remove the tariffs arbitrarily in the future, a President would need to assume the political risk of increasing the national deficit.
3. Trump imposed tarriffs on his first term that Biden did not reverse. Even if the next President is a Democrat it's more likely than not that the trade deals remain in place.
4. A strong contender for the next president is the current vice president, JD Vance, who would be highly unlikely to reverse.
Trump didn’t initiate sweeping tariffs in his last term, and they weren’t wildly unpopular. Trump is accumulating enough bad will at the moment to make it very politically easy for someone to wash away everything if they win the 2028 election.
If Trump's moves pan out in the positive for American people over the next year or two, controversial as they may be in the present, then sentiment will increase, plain and simple.
JD Vance is quite popular among Republicans and reasonably popular among independents, which is all you need to win the presidency. The Democrats, on the other hand, have no heir apparent and have quite a few structural issues within their own party at the national level. We'll see what the actual field looks like in 2028 but that is a long ways off and a lot will change between now and then.
...it gifts authoritarian power to autocrats and fully guarantees more authoritarian behavior.
But if this even gives us some chance to jolt our manufacturing sector back, will we start to gain some momentum? Even if it's mostly using automation. Will it help to reduce our reliance on China?
I doubt it will in the same way that it's been extremely hard for other countries to replicate the US momentum in R&D.
But one can hope.