Comment by BobbyJo
19 hours ago
I mean, i wouldn't call 300% increase in collected tariffs and a tax break for onshore capital investment lip service...
19 hours ago
I mean, i wouldn't call 300% increase in collected tariffs and a tax break for onshore capital investment lip service...
Tariffs are not now, have never, and will never lead to an increase in domestic production.
They only lead to higher costs and/or a festering, shambling corpse of domestic production that is a shell of its former self.
The US has done this multiple times already and the result is always the same.
Numerous countries have done this and the result is always the same.
The results, everywhere, every time, forever, are always the same.
Higher prices, stagnant markets, eroding capabilities, higher and higher tariffs and/or subsidies to keep it all propped up.
I'd call the first part utterly counter-productive and stupid.
The fact that he just signed a bill utterly decimating the last important work done in this country also runs counter to the idea that he's doing fuck all about it.
And, the example completely ignores the conversation part of the OOP. The last 40-50 years of neoliberal drunken greed by the people at the top isn't going to be suddenly reversed for the next fifty years. There are few ways of reversing that. All, uncomfortable.
> I'd call the first part utterly counter-productive and stupid.
I don't think there is a better method of onshoring than tariffs, personally. You change the cost of offshoring and see what the market does. IMO its the least complicated and most capital efficient way of doing it. That being said, changing the tariffs every week kills most of the benefit of that simplicity.
> The fact that he just signed a bill utterly decimating the last important work done in this country
What work is that?
Tariffs are a demand-side change, there's also subsidies for supply-side.
But the manner in which they were done shows a lack of planning. Whatever it is you want to on-shore (or prevent from being off-shored), tariff that, but not the economic inputs to make that.
Want to make more EVs domestically? Don't tariff electric motors. Want to make more electric motors domestically? Don't tariff bolts, insulated wire, or high performance permanent magnets. Want to make more high performance permanent magnets domestically? Don't tariff neodymium.
If you tariff everything, you're putting off manufacturing that depends on anything.
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