Comment by firejake308
12 days ago
My problem with large-scale market regulation is that it also increases the price of inputs for companies who would otherwise be interested in building a factory in the US. Do you have a solution for that?
12 days ago
My problem with large-scale market regulation is that it also increases the price of inputs for companies who would otherwise be interested in building a factory in the US. Do you have a solution for that?
Inputs are cheaper (and thus have lower tariffs in an absolute sense) than outputs. I think the author underestimates the ability of the market to adapt to incentives.
They're still correct though that there are plenty of good reasons why we don't do manufacturing in the US right now, and tariffs do absolutely nothing to change that reality, they just artificially make the alternative worse at significant expense to consumers.
I feel misunderstood. I'm definitely not advocating for tariffs. The point is that even if this strategy worked for bringing manufacturing back (it won't in general and widespread because of labor shortage), it would result in products that are not going to be internationally competitive.
Why would you incentivize foreign companies to do that, when you want American companies to build factories in US?