Comment by kotaKat
3 months ago
Missing reason #15: commercial lenders with a brain realize that these tariffs and this self-imposed domestic crisis will dissipate in the next ~6 years. Nobody's going to lend in this market to try to spin up a new greenfield project in the US that will take years to get operational when they can sit and ride it out - ESPECIALLY at these interest rates.
The government could make loans directly and guarantee purchase prices, but it's also stopped making payments congress committed it to, so you'd be crazy to trust any promises from the administration.
This is a big one. Once upon a time, the Democrats and Republicans listened to the same think tanks, so there was continuity in planning. Now, they seem to be opposed to plans simply because the "other side" came up with them. The whiplash we've been experiencing has torn the economy apart and scared businesses away.
You’re almost right. This is not a both sides issue. One side has made a concerted effort to get us to this point, and it started in the 80s or before.
Obviously false but whatever
Not only will it take years to get operational, there is no way it would ever reach the scale and reach of Chinese manufacturing, not in six years, not in sixty. Even if they throw trillions of investor money at it.
China and others are clearly demonstrating the power of capitalism with state support. The US is too busy infighting and keeping capitalism and politics separate (small government, let the market decide etc). You wouldn't find enough employees that want to work in manufacturing; you'd need millions to even try and get close to what China is doing.
Now I'm not actually OK with what China is doing, the paragraphs about worker conditions were quite telling. But I will recognize that it gives them the upper hand in manufacturing that the US hasn't had since the 50's.
(meta: I'm gonna have to specify "the 1950's soon" don't I?)
The apostrophe when specifying decades is incorrect, it's a common grammatical error.
Should be "50s" and "1950s". Sorry, I usually don't do this but I otherwise liked your comment and thought you might want to know.
hacker news is so much fun.
> demonstrating the power of capitalism with state support
This is actually an excellent reason for tariffs. If we can't beat them at their game because it goes against our principles, then just don't buy their stuff.
So rather than competing when a more efficient innovation seems to have come about, just put our hands over our eyes and pretend it doesn't exist to our markets?
It's almost like the U.S. is going to lose either way.
I'm not so sure.
The tariffs most certainly will dissipate but we can't discount the chance that they may be replaced with actual written in law voted on by congress and signed by the president taxes that have similar but much more durable effects.
Manufacturing and heavy industry really hates off-shoring. They only do it because the sum total of other policy makes it the only viable option. I can see them taking a decent haircut in pursuit of some longer term goal.
I have a suspicion that the coming tax cuts will be extreme, and the gaps in critical funding will be covered with tariff income. This will essentially make tariffs a cornerstone for government finances.
Political suicide to roll back tax breaks if they are primarily for the <$150k earners, like trump wants.
> Political suicide to roll back tax breaks if they are primarily for the <$150k earners, like trump wants.
What tax breaks has he aimed at these people beyond some of the overtime and tipping (which is expected to only equate to about $2K)?
Instead:
>The largest tax cuts would accrue to the highest-income families, the Treasury said.
> Household in the top 5% — who earn more than $450,000 a year, roughly — are the “biggest winners,” according to a July 2024 analysis by the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. They’d get over 45% of the benefits of extending the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, it said.
> A Penn Wharton Budget Model analysis on the impacts of the broad Republican tax plan had a similar finding.
> The bottom 80% of income earners would get 29% of the total value of proposed tax cuts in 2026, according to the Wharton analysis, issued Thursday. The top 10% would get 56% of the value, it said.
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If it looked like congress was eager to vote these tariffs into law, things would be different, as that sentiment might outlast the current administration, but that doesn't appear to be the case.