it’s like you believe you can tariff them expecting they won’t do the same. Why do you believe the rest of the world is not going to retaliate and why do you believe America can prosper without the rest of the world?
What’s the point of having a military alliance with countries you puts tariffs on? That’s unfriendly to say the least.
Honestly asking: what other way would anyone suggest to bring back outsourced manufacturing jobs?
I’ve always heard broad public support on both sides of the aisle for bringing back those jobs. Wasn’t that always going to make things more expensive?
ETA: the downvotes lead me to believe a lot of y’all are caught up in the nationalism of the arguments, and refuse to consider the logistics of what you want. That goes for both Red MAGA wanting recklessly applied tariffs, and Blue MAGA wanting to start WW3 without any existing domestic production. Neither of you are thinking shit through.
I don’t think there is any way to bring back those jobs. You guys are dreaming if you think you can just go back to an economy of the past.
The world has globalized, America can’t just pretend it hasn’t. Sure you can try and bring everything in house but by alienating allies there are lots of things you just can’t get yourselves like many raw materials, and then you need to worry about exporting to actually bring money into your economy not just move it around in circles.
Plus, think about the logistics of that.
Goods produced in the US are categorically more expensive due to infrastructure, cost of living (and therefore wage expectations). If we could wave a magic wand to transplant an effective manufacturing facility from Pakistan and place it in rural Mississippi, hire Americans to do the work, and begin pumping out goods, the price to produce the goods would increase substantially.
Americans wouldn’t be able to afford American made goods, which is true even now. Many Americans try to buy American “when possible”, but cost quickly outweighs patriotism.
Your last paragraph is completely off course and backwards. Americans can’t afford American made goods precisely because of the outsourcing.
We’re proposing the Henry Ford model of paying your workers enough to be able to afford your products.
I agree with your position, but I’m struggling to reconcile that with the western push for war with global superpowers.
The pandemic temporarily crippled our economy with an interruption in shipping from China. How the hell are we planning to survive a hot war with China over Taiwan? They could defeat us without firing a single shot, by just refusing to ship here.
Plus there’s no one saying you can’t reduce reliance on specific countries like China. It is indeed dangerous to rely on any one country for too much. But if you spread it out to many countries and make sure to have some domestic supply for the most important things it would be fine.
At the moment Trump is targeting all countries, and many for no reason at all.
Cries in Canadian
China also doesn’t want to interrupt trade, it benefits them just as much as America, that’s how. They won’t invade Taiwan if there’s a threat of war disrupting trade.
If you isolate the country from China too much then there is no benefit to China not invading. Globalization encourages peace because trade benefits all. Russia is suffering from all their sanctions now, they made a mistake thinking things would be over in a few days and people would get over it. Now they need to grit their teeth and pull through it. No one else wants to be Russia.
Why wouldn’t China do exactly the same mistake in some point?
As European I would advice against the trust that the strong economic ties would keep totalitarians in check.
But China is much better positioned to outlast us during any interruption in trade for the same reason Russia has survived sanctions. They have the local production capacity and access to vast mineral & resource wealth that we can’t match.
Do they? As much as we like to play it quiet, the US exports a lot of food globally- China gets some $17b worth. Those tend to be perishable, so any hot war would have to be over quickly for China to come outahead, and any protracted war would see them need a new breadbasket eother domestic (reducing the industrial/military work pool), or international (which comes with the same risks they have now over US ties).
Right, but China is making broad new alliances every day across the globe, and we’ve spent the last century making enemies. So who’s better positioned to find alternative trade partners?
“Every time China visits, we get a hospital. Every Britain visits, we get a lecture.” And every time the US visits, we’re bringing barely concealed threats.
China isn’t reliant on imported food, from the US or anywhere.
You do it by incentivizing building factories, up to the point where a company can be competitive with those outsourced industries. Something kind of like the CHIPS act that Trump just axed. Random and blanket tariffs will not help. Tariffs can mainly only help prevent an industry from leaving. For example, we have huge tariffs on Chinese EVs because they would outcompete every US manufactured EV and we would lose those jobs.
The reality is that it’s very difficult to take a centrist position here. Trump’s tariffs make no sense. They will not bring back any jobs because no one is going to build a factory in the next 4 years if there’s a chance the next president reverses Trump’s decision.
It’s also a bad move to tariff our main allies because not only does it make things more expensive for Americans, it erodes trust in our nation and destabilizes our position of dominance globally. In the eyes of the world, we’ve gone from stable and reliable to dangerous and unpredictable. It will take a lot more than 4 years to recover from that.
The big worry people have is a potential incoming economic crash. We’re already dealing with a very weak labor market, uncomfortably high inflation, irrational stock valuations, and high housing prices. If now a huge wave of federal layoffs, which will likely result in instability of federal programs many Americans rely on, hits at the same time as what will essentially be artificially caused inflation through tariffs, it could send things into a downward spiral.
Well said and I agree :)
Start by taxing the shit out of the CEOs and board of directors, with a mechanism built into the taxation so that any increase in their compensation is entirely offset by an increase in taxes. Then offer incentives to on-shore labor again.
This is the way.
Richard Nixon was great at weaponizing taxes against windfall profits to the benefit of the people. Also, if I recall correctly, this sort of taxation is partly why the US prospered so much from the 40’s to the 60’s.
It’s also a policy we are never going to get back in a post-Citizens United US. The people who wield the levers of power will never allow tax rates to get that high again.
All the more reason to stop voting Democrat and pull the lever for the Green candidate instead.
Greens are controlled opposition. Same for DSA. I like PSL.
Bring back jobs via tax incentives for being local and cutting tax breaks and bailouts for taking industry outside the US.
Really I’d support blocking market access at all for companies that outsource what could be done locally. But again, that will make things more expensive. I don’t know if there’s any way to get around that.
Yes, just the act of not producing products in countries with slave wages will make things more expensive.
I just don’t see any future in the US where the powers that be allow the status quo to be changed in that way.
Currency rate between US/China to drop 3x or more. That is also solution to US debt. Doubling down on dead ender energy will create high cost of living, not just from climate related insurance rates, but for expensive manufacturing energy, and need to pay high wages just to have home affordability.
Destroying NA auto industry will destroy it instead of auto companies writing off investments in Canada/Mexico to reinvest in US declining market that is smaller and uncompetitive. Massive auto subsidies would be needed, but still no export markets. Auto sector trade with Canada has a US surplus, with Canadians have specialized skill in parts making.
Manufacturing only makes sense if there is export potential for good products. Boeing and Caterpillar and US weapons getting blacklisted by world is bad. UAW cheering on Trump NA tariffs won’t be forgotten. Blacklisting US agriculture means their share of massive subsidies.
The future (present in China) of manufacturing is robotics. There are plenty of jobs in constructing factories, but those are cheaper in other countries, and the best robot/manufacturing companies are in China. Trump has hinted at welcoming Chinese FDI in US manufacturing, but that would be factory construction jobs more than significant permanent manual labour jobs. UAW won’t love that move.
There is a balance to it. Yes, local manufacturing will make things more expensive. But making more durable goods tends to pay better wages for more people. And let’s be honest here, most people can’t be a doctor or write code. High paying collage degrees are beyond them. Or we can maintain low paying retail jobs for the majority of people.
But the is a balance and it can’t be done over night without causing large amounts of economic pain to many people.
But doesn’t escalating tensions with China require it to be done relatively overnight? Seems like anyone wanting this done more carefully needs to also accept that will require giving up the fight over Taiwan.
The bigger question is “do Americans actually want these jobs?” According to the JOLTS surveys for the last several quarters there’s about 100,000 open manufacturing jobs that are not getting filled, in a labor market sized about 500,000. Simply put, it’s abundantly clear that people don’t want the manufacturong jobs that do exist
I also saw this from the inside when I worked my last job with a company that does contract cleaning services for industrial facilities. Nobody wants to work industrial sanitation, and they end up primarily hiring immigrants and ex-convicts as they’re the only people desperate enough to take these industrial sanitation jobs. And it’s not for lack of pay or benefits, the fact is the nature of the work sucks!
No, a lot of those positions are left unfilled on purpose. Lots of ghost jobs. Lots of jobs left vacant in the hopes they can fill it with an H1B.
Your last point is also completely wrong. It’s not that people aren’t willing to do the jobs. They just want to be properly compensated. Hell, I’d take those jobs for the right pay level.
He’s out of line, but he’s right.