Or shop American and help keep manufacturing and jobs alive here.
I think it's a fair compromise. As Americans we are used to having an overwhelming amount of choice, partly due to our previous open trade policies. Something you don't really see in other countries. Go to Japan and you can count the American products sold on your hand.
I'm living on Japan right now and this is absurd. There are American brands everywhere (although as usual who knows where the products are made). American food brands. American steak. American sportswear. American backpacks. Entire shops in the mall devoted to American fashion. I'd say appliances and cars are more rarely American brands but there are reasons beyond trade barriers why that's true.
There are certain clothing brands (at a much higher cost), large fast food chains, and Apple are the exceptions. Basically really large companies that make specific deals.
https://www.seiyu.co.jp/assets/images/flyer_blackfriday25112...
For food items, the import regulations are much stricter in every country than for stuff like electronics or clothes. Meat especially is very highly restricted, due to differences in feeding, antibiotics, etc...
And how are "large companies" making deals? The same import duties apply to everyone.
You don't see GE appliances over there either.
Yet LG, Samsung appliances are plentiful in the states.
Could coffee be grown in reasonable quantities inside the USA? I find some mention of very expensive high-end 'boutique' coffee grown in California but it is not generally a crop that grows well in the continental USA.
(until global warming reduces the chances of frost in Florida perhaps?)
Another example from the article was a tea grower. Again, niche growing is limited to just some regions of the USA, with less than 0.1% of consumption domestically produced.
And of course with these products they have distinctive tastes that reflect where they were grown, so tea from California is distinctive tasting and not a direct substitute for tea from Japan from the article.
The growers in the article had been heavily disrupted by tariffs.
I don't mind at all reducing tariffs for things we dont manufacture or can't for various reasons.
I believe the administration is lowering tariffs for things like that.
Beef on the other hand should be temporarily lowered since our cattle herd is half of what it should be. (It plummeted under Biden takes awhile to return as the herd matures) Soooo import from Argentina until it's back up.
That’s not a new thing. It seems like you guys are the only ones whose goods aren’t interesting.
This kind of myopic view completely misses the scope of manufacturing chains that are simply missing in the US. Things like stainless steel rebar and LCD screens take many years to build up efficient production for.
>Go to Japan and you can count the American products sold on your hand
Do you honestly think that Japan makes almost everything domestically? There's a good reason for the absence of American products in Japan. You are so close :)
The reason is that there are hardly any products made in America.
Pretty much everything I buy, apart from computer tech, is from an American company.
I realise that my experience is limited to the handful of times I've tried to buy stuff from the US. Perhaps I've just been very unlucky, but frankly, the odds are against it.
Or you know, drive us into a recession. You do recall tariffs (Smoot-Hawley) were a contributing factor to the length and depth of the Great Depression, right?