Comment by znpy
4 hours ago
> No company can plan based on the tariffs. There is zero guarantee that then next government won't revoked them or that the current one won't flip-flop. Local manufacturing doesn't swing on a 2-4 (or 6 or 8) year timescale. There needs to be consistency.
Indeed, but the role of a government is to steer/push private initiative in a certain direction.
Tariffs and stuff are steering private companies towards building stuff in-house (as in: "in the us").
Future initiative inconsistent with this directions will essentially be a sabotage of the US economy.
Tariff introduced by congress? Sure. Tariffs introduced by fiat? No.
The fact that a president can create them out of thin air means they can be removed just as easily. I'm not anti-tariff or anti-re-homing-production (where it makes sense) but the _way_ it was done is my problem. Additionally there was no ramp, it was 0->100 immediately. A bill passed by congress to slowly ratchet up tariffs or similar over a period of time would have a much larger impact IMHO. It would give companies the ability to plan instead of just react. The tariffs were enacted in a timespan that made it impossible to move production local before they went into effect. Additionally, tariffs being applied unequally is terrible, it just means whoever has the biggest bribes (solid gold plaque holders anyone?) or can pretend they are moving manufacturing back to the US gets an advantage.
The amount of power held in the executive branch is unacceptable. Just look at how they raided/repurposed the CHIPS act money to force Intel (which I have no real love for) to sell a stake to the government.
Authoritarian governments are bad for business.
Additionally, tariffs should be targeted for the specific goods (e.g. CHIPS Act). To do blanket tariffs on entire countries doesn't make sense. Why move manufacturing to the US when importing raw materials also costs more?
> means they can be removed just as easily.
Some of them were removed. And then put back. Then increased, then decreased, or otherwise changed depending on what Trump was thinking at 3am while making social media posts
Well thought out strategic tariffs are ok. But this is knee jerk tariffs. Even in the best case scenario introduces a lot of uncertainty which freezes investing and decision making in general.
The American electorate seems quite happy to elect people who will sabotage the US economy, so that isn't any reassurance that it won't happen. Tariffs are currently going up and down based on a single man's whims.
Why would when when they can just bribe the current government to be exempt?
If tariffs were planned, steady increase on a long term we might see a good effect. Like tariffs were used before this trump admin.