No Stupid Questions

If you don’t support tariffs to bring back manufacturing jobs domestically, how do you think we could make it through a war with our manufacturing partners?

I express no position here about China nor Taiwan, but the false dichotomy presented is between: 1) enforce trade barriers indiscriminately against every country, territory, and uninhabitable island in the world without regard for allies nor enemies, or 2) diversify economic dependency away from one particular country.

The former is rooted in lunacy and harkens back to the mercantilism era, where every country sought to bring more gold back home and export more stuff and reducing imports. The latter is pragmatic and diplomatic, creating new allies (economically and probably militarily) and is compatible with modern global economic notions like comparative advantage, where some countries are simply better at producing a given product (eg Swiss watches) so that other countries can focus on their own specialization (eg American-educated computer scientists).

As a specific example, see Mexico, which under NAFTA and USMCA stood to be America's new and rising manufacturing comrade. Mexico has the necessary geographical connectivity and transportation links to the mainland USA, its own diverse economy, relatively cheap labor, timezones and culture that make for easier business dealings than cross-Pacific, and overall was very receptive to the idea of taking a share of the pie from China.

Long-term thinking would be to commit to this strategic position, this changing the domestic focus to: 1) replace China with North America suppliers for certain manufactured goods, 2) continue to foster industries which are "offshore-proof", such as small businesses that simply have to exist locally or industries whose products remain super-expensive or hazrdous to ship (eg lithium ion batteries). Sadly, the USA has not done this.

It is sheer arrogance to believe that the economic tide for industries of yore (eg plastic goods, combustion motor vehicles, call centers) can be substantially turned around in even a decade, when that transition away from domestic manufacturing took decades to occur. Further egoism is expressed by unilateral tarrif decisions that don't pass muster logically nor arithmetically.

This post is all over the place. Temporary indiscriminate tariffs on every trading partner won't bring manufacturing jobs to America. What does that have to do with helping Taiwan?

Nobody is "against tariffs" - they are used everywhere. We are against this ridiculous random implementation that makes no sense. Mr. Trump is not using them like a scalpel, to grow manufacturing here, I don't think he cares about that. He seems to think they are some way to bully other countries into doing what he wants.

If you don’t support tariffs to bring back manufacturing jobs

I also don't support prohibition to improve crop output.

Tariffs don't create manufacturing jobs. Subsidies do.

If you don’t support tariffs to bring back manufacturing jobs domestically

Do they even accomplish this?

"Chinese exports have a large impact on our economy, therefore you have to either support tariffs or let them do anything they want" 🤡 take

How was China's economy doing during global shipping interruptions, btw? 🙃

China could tell their businesses not to sell to countries they’re at war with but then they wouldn’t be able to sell any of the goods they produce and they’d all be unemployed

This is like how do you oppose bulldozing through the rainforest of Panama, while taking a hard line on everyone’s right to medical care. Yeah a machete and a scalpel are both knives but they’re not both the same

US manufacturing output is far larger than the amount we import form China.

US manufacturing made about $2.5 Trillion in 2021: https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/united-states/manufacturing-output

US imported from China about $0.5 Trillion in 2021 (all goods, not just manufacturing): https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html

China could defeat most western countries without firing a single shot, just by cutting off their access to Chinese exports.

I disagree with this assumption!

We don't rely on China, we benefit from trading with them. Some of our goods go there, we get some of their goods. If a war breaks out and that trade stops; we have plenty of manufacturing capacity. And the point of having allies is that we would expect assistance in the event of a war, so we don't expect US manufacturing to even completely fill the gap (similarly our allies would expect the US to help if China were to target one of them... except that the current administration is alienating everyone but Russia...).

If you look another level down into what each country manufactures; the US makes a lot of military equipment, and imports a lot of consumer goods form China. Our military would not lose much capacity by a loss in trade with China, but US consumers would lose some of their consumption options. Guess which one matters when it comes to war?

I don't support tariffs as a tool to increase American manufacturing jobs because they don't accomplish that goal. This is not a political belief; it's derived from evidence. Many sources available, here's one: https://files.taxfoundation.org/20180627113002/Tax-Foundation-FF595-1.pdf

Using tariffs as a diplomatic tool is only effective in extreme cases. Diplomacy is difficult and so many things are interrelated. If a tariff threat makes China capitulate to our position on Taiwan, why not just use a tariff threat to bring China completely into line on every other position? Tariffs are blunt, and cause harm (economic and diplomatic) to broad areas of both countries unrelated to the specific issue. Topical example: sanctions on Russia did not change their position on Ukraine, even though those were far more severe than just a blanket X% tariff and were supported by many other countries (multi-lateral as opposed to uni-lateral). If we want to influence China's position on Taiwan, diplomacy is more effective than tariffs.

Manufacturing is costly in the United States because enforced minimum wages, enforced safety protocols (enshrined in the blood of lost workers), and regulations brought about as a reaction to violations of those safety protocols by management of the local companies have necessarily increased the cost of manufacturing locally.

In a totally free market, the owners of the businesses would be "free" to abuse their workers how they see fit. Thankfully, most of the people in the U.S. have recognized that safety of workers is an important factor. The ability to enforce safety is likewise necessary when some company managers/executives have shown disdain for safety routinely.

The infrastructure required to implement the wages and safety has increased the cost to the companies in question. No business will last very long if increased costs aren't passed on to their customers in some way. This leads to manufacturers having to face the choice of increasing the passed on cost of working within the U.S.'s regulations and requirements, or moving their manufacturing process to countries with lower standards of wages and regulation. Most companies have chosen the latter. If the purpose of owning and running a business is to increase the profit it makes, then additional costs to the business are necessarily not absorbed by the company and allowed to eat into profit

A tariff is likewise only seen as a regulation for which the cost will be passed on to the consumer by increasing the retail price of a product, and is typically seen as a regressive action.

If one wants to increase manufacturing in the U.S., one has to provide incentives for manufacturers to do so. margin, they are simply built into the final price of the service/product provided by the business. These incentives could take many forms, from tax breaks in some ways, to more favorable interest rates for specific loans (given criteria relevant to the specific market).

There was no war with manufacturing partners. Trump started one with his silly plan. He doesn't understand tariffs at all, and that'll be to the detriment of the average Joe. Things will be more expensive to produce (the US relies heavily on imports and doesn't have a strong manufacturing base for most products). Raw materials will still need to be imported, and you can bet the importers will charge the US more for them in retaliation.

The best solution was to let sleeping dogs lie, but the Fantascist wouldn't understand this. He's either an economically clueless buffoon or is shorting the market so his ilk can benefit.