Comment by viraptor
12 days ago
This view is too trivial. You could also stimulate manufacturing by promising tariffs increasing over the next X years, while not taxing the imported building materials and machines for longer. Or you could use tariffs to both break trade and make the environment too expensive and uncertain to invest in large construction - and delay the process by a few extra years.
I don't see how this is a reply to my point. Building up manufacturing takes a decade or longer (putting the problem aside that there aren't going to be enough workers). Tariffs are heavy market regulation. Even if manufacturing was brought back successfully, the production costs would be too high without such heavy market regulation.
You seem to assume that once manufacturing has been brought back it would somehow be internationally competitive. I don't see how that's possible.
Maybe I didn't get your point.