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Comment by kryogen1c | Hacker News Reader

Almost all the comments acting like this is some truth bombshell, like people in trumpistan all thought raising tariffs magically made the us economy better. This is a straw man, no?

Tariffs are a mid-long term strategy to encourage onshoring business, for reasons including military, national security, and political influence on foreign powers.

This is a complicated topic involving the global economy and evolving intercountry landscape. All these slam dunk takes are incomplete to the point of being wrong - and inflammatory.

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The use of tariffs as a mid-long strategy, in my view, would require a stable, long-term communication that the US government will implement careful, strategic tariffs alongside incentives to strengthen chosen domestic industries where they believe a domestic alternative is feasible. We haven't seen anything even close to that at any point in this tariff rollercoaster - tariffs for products that cannot be produced at scale domestically (coffee, bananas), tariffs for grudges, tariffs that only exist for a week, tariffs that are written post-hoc after a Truth post to fit what the president said. There's an argument to be made for domestic protectionism, but the people currently at the levers are not serious policy-minded folks.

Im inclined to agree with most of what you say, although I dont follow economics or current events closely enough to have a strong opinion.

My point is that your thoughtful response about reliable continuity, both inter- and intra- president, is not present in a lot of the comments.

Because it's a layer too rudimentary. You also don't see people commentating that "taxation is when the government takes a cut of a transaction or of property."

The only people who need to back up to "industrial policy requires consistency and transparency" are those who are either incapable of or willfully deciding not to understand what's going on around them.

It's becoming a real problem how the human brain is wired to prioritize "group-loyalty" over "factual accuracy."

I'm sure it worked great when we were in small groups living in caves, but it is making the modern world a lot more dangerous.

This is the real problem with the US tariffs. There is no strategy and no confidence from businesses that their investments will pay off. China can do it because everyone knows that the CCP will stick to their plan but Trump changes his mind every hour and no policy can ever last more than an election cycle.

The economist upon whom many of Trump tariff supporters reference says essentially the same thing: https://www.npr.org/2025/12/29/nx-s1-5660865/why-economists-...

We never accurately measured effect of pedal on the gas trade with China caused with WTO admission nor even NAFTA, the no on ramp was huge shock that didn’t show up in traditional measures. So trying to go full gas reverse with no real strategy is almost mindless.

That argument seems completely nullified by the fact that the president unilaterally changes his mind on tariffs every other day and setting up a manufacturing basis can take 10+ years.

Seems safer for many business to just continue to operate outside of the US and get a more consistent business relationship with every other country in the world.

There were many explanations given by the administration to justify the tariffs. One of them was that it would improve domestic manufacturing; another was that it would improve national security. The tariffs are (so far) not advancing either goal. Tech is getting so many tariff carve-outs that I am suspicious they ever will.

Maybe I’m wrong but I thought the administration was saying that tariffs will be paid by importing countries.

Whatever strategy you pursue I think it’s good to know who is actually paying for it.

Oh dear. There is zero chance there was anything resembling this sort of semi-plausible logic behind the tarrifs. What you said above is sane washing invented by people who operate on logic, trying to find some reason-based logic. No such logic exists. It's all insanity, sadism and tribal performance.

My aunt is a republican lobbyist. She is also a drunk. This means that she gets drunk and texts my family her unfiltered thoughts all the time.

She absolutely thinks that tariffs magically make the US economy better in a very short time period. She thinks that the governments of the countries that she hates are paying them and that the tariffs are solving the deficit problem. She thinks that the number of manufacturing jobs in the US has skyrocketed.

The dumbest person supporting a policy is not the reason for supporting it.

The claim above is

> Almost all the comments acting like this is some truth bombshell, like people in trumpistan all thought raising tariffs magically made the us economy better. This is a straw man, no?

This is a person who is deeply involved in the mechanics of writing legislation supported by GOP legislators. I do not believe that she is uniquely dumb amongst right wingers who have access to the levers of power.

would explaining that Tarrifs are supposed to create comparative competition rather than get other countries pay fees dramatically change her world view?

I do not see why it would.

I agree - she would adopt the stronger position.

I have no idea what you are saying.

Are you saying that my aunt would suddenly change her mind about the nature of the Trump tariffs to understand that they achieve a totally different outcome than she thinks over a totally different time frame?

She already thinks that Trump has saved american manufacturing and that the deficit problem is gone. Why would she change that opinion?

My understanding is that if she was corrected to the proper understanding of Tariffs, she would not change her support of the tariff. Therefore debunking what "dumb people think" is still pointless. Because they aren't really advocating for a particular policy, they are advocating for a direction which is well represented by a whole family of policies - in particular the strong form.

I still don't understand how this relates.

But whatever this is, it seems irrelevant. The original post said that the description of somebody like my aunt was a strawman. It is not.

You have correctly identified how tarriffs work, congratulations! You have not correctly identified how the administration thinks they work or how they've told constituents they work.

People do believe this because that's what they were sold. Whether the line they bought has any connection to objective reality is irrelevant.

> Tariffs are a mid-long term strategy

No, tariffs can be a tool in a mid-long term strategy. They are not themselves a strategy.

> Tariffs are a mid-long term strategy to encourage onshoring business, for reasons including military, national security, and political influence on foreign powers.

Do you take their arguments at face value? The arguments don't even work because the US clearly had better security, was in a better situation militarily (due to relationships, including with allies), and more influence without the tariffs. If you don't trade with them, they won't be interested in what you have to say.

It does fit an attempt centralize vast power in the current White House, which now controls trade, has shares in several large companies, great influence over many other companies, influence in large media organizations, and claims virtually uninhibited power in many domains.

Many people in Trumpistan do believe tariffs magically make the US economy better.

Then there are the sanewashers who try to act like there is a grand strategy behind taxing uhhh... bathroom vanities... then removing the tax a few months later.

Both are wrong, just different flavors and with different moral and intellectual culpability for being wrong (the latter are worse).

> like people in trumpistan all thought raising tariffs magically made the us economy better. This is a straw man, no?

No, that's the literal messaging from the US government. Trump has been talking about tariffs as the magic pill that fixes everything.

Yes, and also tariffs are a strategy to appeal to nationalists. This group is fine making the tradeoff of a worse economy if it means putting your nation's people first

Its an interesting point you end up raising - does it still count as a strategy even if you are doing something patently impossible given the knowledge and intelligence at your disposal?

If someone decided to come up with a strategy to do something fanciful, like find the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow to solve their debt problems, would it really be worthy enough to be called a strategy?

What knowledge and intelligence would that be?

Access to the world’s foremost experts in virtually any subject. Including highly classified shit.

Just not the curiosity to seek it out.

If we take the absolutely narrow scope of just Tariffs - Elementary economics, and history from far and wide. We know exactly what tariffs achieve and fail to achieve. It’s the stuff of 101 Econ classes.

The tariffs are a man shouting "obey or I'll shoot," but he's pointing the gun at his own head.

Unfortunately he's the rich uncle everyone has become dependent on, so the world can't just let him FAFO.

You're not wrong, but at the same time, any discussion around this subject that remotely resembles a truth bombshell promptly gets flagged, so the only way you're going to see anything about this subject is if it states the obvious in the most bland way possible.

This means that to the subset of HN crowd that don't have alternate sources of political news, this indeed looks like a bombshell.

also the importer, which the article says does absorb cost, is also often an arm of the foreign company.

The article just says it doesn’t show up when shipping containers change hands.

> Almost all the comments acting like this is some truth bombshell, like people in trumpistan all thought raising tariffs magically made the us economy better. This is a straw man, no?

No. It isn’t.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/09/politics/fact-check-trump-van...

> “She is a liar. She makes up crap … I am going to put tariffs on other countries coming into our country, and that has nothing to do with taxes to us. That is a tax on another country,” Trump said.

> Vance said in late August that as a result of tariffs Trump imposed during his presidency, “prices went down for American citizens.”

Those uses of tariffs are to encourage changes that result in the tariff revenue decreasing over time.

Trump has said many times, including as recently as last month, that tariffs will make so much money we can get rid of the income tax.

This suggests that the man is not thinking coherently on the subject.

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