Comment by new_user_final
8 days ago
My understandings reading some comments. 1. Prices will increase 2. US will need to manufacture things and they will need a lots of workers. There will be shortage of workers because factory pays minimal wages. 3. Factories will have to offer higher amount of salary that will increase price
Ultimately prices increases for everything and working class will suffer more.
Don't forget that you first have to build the factories and somehow resuscitate the knowledge that died a few generations ago. A factory isn't just a big warehouse full of low skilled people, you need machines we don't have anymore, processes we lost, &c.
All of which sounds ok until you factor in timelines. In takes years to spin up new factories and supply chains.
Choking the existing options when replacements are years away is a guaranteed way to ensure economic carnage
It's a scheme for the top-top to once again, not pay for anything because they pass the cost along. The W2 class gets to redistribute amongst themselves.
More likely that prices will go up and wages will stay the same.
Factories take a long time to build and businesses know that Trump is erratic and therefore have no idea how long these tariffs will be in place for. So opening a totally new and otherwise unneeded factory is a big risk. (Some companies have made recent announcements about opening factories in the US but largely these factories were planned to meet existing marker needs, just not yet decided where they would be.)
The price of a product will only go down when the majority of demand can be met by tariff free means. Until then a US company will sell a product at the same price as the imported, tariffed product because that's what they do. Same happened during the recent inflationary spike. Businesses put prices up more than their costs went up as they had an excuse.
Large businesses hate putting up wages and the level of desperation in the US is such that there is a large pool of people to fill low paying factory jobs. The post-pandemic wage increases were noticeable for the opposition to them and that was a very short 12-18 month spike, with wage growth now back to normal.
Yes, either way, the working class, indeed the median American, suffer.