Comment by carlosjobim
5 hours ago
There needs to be a distinction between the working poor and the non-working poor.
People who don't work are hurt by tariffs, whether they are rich or poor. While people who work are more benefitted by the higher wages of increased domestic labor demand than they are hurt by higher consumer prices.
Given the option of higher income or lower prices, I take higher income any day. Because like the rest of the working population I need a home to live in more than I need foreign goods.
> Tariffs make the overall tax burden on society less progressive.
It might do, but it also has a progressive upwards effect on salaries and employment as workers move on to better opportunities when domestic demand increases.
>While people who work are more benefitted by the higher wages of increased domestic labor
This is not a given. In the US unemployment has been low for a very long time. If the majority of your population is in the 'well enough' paid service economy and you're trying to bring pay low paying blue collar jobs, then all you do is massively increase the total price of everything because the production line works needs to massively increase salaries to compete with things like software engineering.
Furthermore there is zero requirement that onshoring actually brings jobs, at all. If I'm going to build a factory here in the US I'm going to automate the fuck out of everything having the minimal amount of staffing. It won't be like 100 years ago where a factory brought in 1000s of jobs.