Comment by CharlieDigital
15 days ago
> If we could snap our fingers and domestically produce most or all of our own products, would you not prefer that?
That's like saying "If we could snap our fingers and every state would have mild weather, abundant capital, and a highly talented workforce, would you not prefer that?"
Yeah, then every city could be like SF or LA or NYC.
But it's not even worth it as a thought exercise because it completely ignores reality. The reason I live in NJ and pay high taxes is because this is where the high paying jobs and good schools are. Cottontown, Alabama theoretically could be a financial capitol of the world and if you want to base your position on that, then you should probably re-examine your position.
This is called rejecting the hypothetical. Just because it's not worth it for the arguments you care about doesn't mean it doesn't have value as a thought experiment to explore the consequences.
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That potential end state isn’t possible is the point of my initial comment. It is as infeasible as the weather to control where natural resources are located.
Lets talk plastics. Plastic needs oil. We’re the largest oil producer in the world now. But we still import oil! Why? Because the oil we produce isn’t entirely the right kind for everything we do with it.
An end state where the US is an island cannot exist without massive shifts in production and consumption habits.
Maybe you’re saying though that shift should happen and that end state is good?
> But we still import oil! Why? Because the oil we produce isn’t entirely the right kind for everything we do with it.
Just wanted to elaborate a bit on this. Oil is a fantastic example for "why international trade good?" Oil is weird in that it is a fungible commodity (one barrel here is the same as one barrel there), but at the same time, functionality it's not. Each oil formation has different geology and chemistry. There are light sweet crudes, sour crudes, heavy crudes, and so on [1], and refineries (which are massive capital investments with specialized work forces) are typically tooled out to only process one type or family of types of crude oil products.
One paradox of the USA crude industry is that nearly 70% of U.S. refining capacity runs most efficiently with heavier crude, but our shale crude is lighter. Thus, 90% of crude oil imports into the United States are heavier than U.S.-produced shale crude [2]. So even if we had perfect supply/demand of crude within the USA, we would not be able to run our refineries efficiently without a massive overhaul. They have been built under decades of the assumption of a high degree of free international trade.
And these companies will be loathe to invest in retooling if they believe that the tariffs will just be rolled back in four years.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_crude_oil_products
[2] https://www.afpm.org/newsroom/blog/whats-difference-between-...
> That potential end state isn’t possible is the point of my initial comment. It is as infeasible as the weather to control where natural resources are located
You might as well not have commented in the first place if you wanted to throw out my entire premise.
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No, it's not a desirable end state. If we produced everything in the US — just assuming we had magic tech to make it possible - we'd have less and be poorer. Americans today live like kings from 200 years ago, in large part due to global trade.
Yep that's fair.
I had said this somewhere else in the thread as well, but domestic production is a pretty bad idea if success metrics revolve around prices, quantity, or some specific quality metrics.
Where it would potentially be a good approach is if the primary goals are relates to self reliance, sustainability, resilience, etc. I don't think many people actually care about that at the national level though, and our economy as-is almost certainly couldn't allow it.
You think commercial crops have no dependency on weather and growing conditions?
You should try farming mangoes in Vermont!
Where will you grow enough coffee to supply the USA?
Did you forget how growing crops works?
> I'm talking about something we absolutely can, whether we produce our own goods domestically.
Do you think we could grow enough coffee, tea, bananas, avocados and olive oil?
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If global warming keeps up, we'll be growing pineapples in Vermont in no time!