Comment by jayd16
7 days ago
If it's fundamentally a jobs program, you can be a lot smarter about it than tariffs.
If companies couldn't compete before, they're now further disincentivized to compete, leaving the rest of us worse off and uncompetitive with the rest of the world.
Tariffs are just bad policy.
That's the part I just don't get about the pro tariff as reshoring manufacturing argument. That industry only makes sense and will only be profitable in a world where the tariffs are permanent. The Vietnamese textile factories aren't going to just disappear their exports will shift to other parts of the world and if the tariffs ever disappear they'll shift right back to the US. So you'll have a tiny fragile industry beholden to the government for its continued existence that makes an expensive product only for domestic consumption... Maybe that's the actual goal create a new raft of client industries and workers in that industry who'll support the administration because to not do it will destroy them simply by lifting or easing the tariffs.