Put differently, Trump is explicitly attempting to destroy the reason the American stock market generally goes up.
They're explicitly pointing out that the US (and most of the western world) has abandoned the manufacturing sector of their economy, outsourcing work that used to employ millions of people to the developing world.
This is a trade-off that can benefit both countries, but, it is wise to consider both WHO benefits from this, and what the LONG-TERM implications of this entails. It's great for an investor class in America that has the capital to create factories in China, and it's great for China to take USD and start to employ their workforce. But, the question is whether or not this is actually a good thing for the American worker.
The rust-belt would certainly have an opinion on this. My father was a factory worker that was able to support a family on a single income, and when that manufacturing plant closed, it absolutely destroyed the finances of my family.
I personally believe that strategic tariffs should be used to protect our national interests, including providing meaningful employment.
This administration has no interest in strategic tariffs. Instead, they are made overbroad (50% on everything from Canada vs, say, cheap imported steel) and they are made and removed capriciously (tariffs on English whisky dropped after King Charles' visit to the White House).
If Trump really wanted to bring your dad's factory job back, he'd specifically target whatever industry he was working in AND ideally spend the tariff money boosting that industry. This is precisely the strategy countries like Japan used to reach first world status.
Instead Trump uses tariffs like a cudgel -- much closer to what the XKCD comic depicts. There is no chance his tariffs will lead to your father's factory ever being reopened, as that would require, at the bare minimum, a tariff that investors know will stay in place for years, as opposed to one that could be lifted with the visit of a charismatic member of nobility.
Which was more or less the intent of the CHIPS and Science Act for the semiconductors industry.
And the chips act was subsidies
It's also worth pointing out that while, yes, there is 50% tariff on Canadian goods, this only effects ~5% of imported goods, meaning 95% of the Canadian imports are unaffected by this nonsense.
It's also worth pointing out that some of these tariffs actually are being used to help build out US industry, like the CHIPS act.
I don't think that we disagree on anything here, haha
The US has the highest share of revenue going to owners than it ever has in history. We've left behind the Gilded Age.
https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2026/06/the-po...
"Destroy American affluence so that we can't pay with assets instead of exports" is probably the worst conceivable way to unwind the exorbitant privilege of the American Economy. We could have spent that money helping people, instead we spent it on wars and tax breaks for billionaires. We could have spent that money on targeted industrial policy (the IRA and CHIPS acts under Biden were examples of this done right, just not at the scale we needed) but instead we are doing it the hard way. Sigh.