Comment by dingnuts
5 days ago
> Helping them requires creating vast numbers of better paying jobs with better working condition in their country, which require redirecting vast amounts of money to those countries
This was the logic under Deng, and the reason China is now a peer state. Unfortunately when doing business with communists, enriching them doesn't help the individuals move out of poverty because that would require wages to rise and that happens for political reasons not merit in a single party system
If we enrich the CCP we just end up with an adversary capable of taking us on. That's why tariffs.
"If we enrich the CCP we just end up with an adversary capable of taking us on. That's why tariffs."
This argument is absolutely accurate and somewhere between two and six decades late depending on who you feel like blaming for offshoring. Present day all we're doing is poking inflation with a stick, threatening the bond market (and eventually the dollar reserve), and encouraging economic partners to look elsewhere for stability. 3 guesses how all that ends.
The thing that really annoys me is tariffs could have been used SO much more intelligently. For example a 24 month increasing schedule. That gives business the kind of incentive to affect manufacturing and something they can plan against.
But now we have a dumpster fire and tariffs will have an even worse reputation.
It might have been better reputation-wise than the current game of chicken, but tariffs will always sour economic partnerships, which in turn leads to bolstering alternative economic partnerships...
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The tricky part is the goal is another tax cut.
Right now, after all of the other tax cuts, our budget deficit is slightly larger than the US discretionary budget.
Which means that, even if DOGE cut everything, there's still no way to close the deficit without raising taxes.
Enter the tariffs.
Why tariffs on Madagascar?
Maybe he’s not a fan of vanilla ice cream
>Unfortunately when doing business with communists, enriching them doesn't help the individuals move out of poverty because that would require wages to rise and that happens for political reasons not merit in a single party system
But poverty has dropped and income has risen under the CCP? You can argue that the CCP doesn't actually care about "individuals moving out of poverty", and all they care about is staying in power, but this is the sort of accusation that could be levied against governments in the west as well.
Apparently the CCP does suppress wages in various ways to keep export goods manufactured cheaply/competitively. It's probably more of an economic strategy than an expression of collectivism but I can't be sure.