Tariffs are not a new concept and have been used historically to build economies. Top China analysts in the Obama administration credited its economic rise to protective tariffs and high barriers to entry for any foreign companies to sell in country.
I’m probably a bit older than most lemmy users and remember when tariffs were a major talking point for democrats as a positive thing to protect American jobs. Hell, growing up in the Midwest, all my dad and his buddies that worked union jobs had to vote democrat because of their aggressive tariff policy to protect their jobs.
So what if trump is right about tariffs and it reinvigorates the American economy? Will people find another reason to credit the success to? Will it be the end of blue collar voting for the democrats?
I believe the tarrifs are good. Though for other reasons than Trump. The current (previous) situation is super unstable and unsustainable. It basically require a global US monopoly of violence (which was the case for about 30 years). Trade imbalance implies war (as stated by Keynes).
However, the arguments of the Trump administration are completely false and uneducated.
We’ve all been drenched in neoliberal propaganda for about 50 years (disguised as science), so it’s not weird people are unable to think outside of the box on this matter.
Also, super valid question. Don’t get the down votes.
Brother you should take a step back from politics if this is the depth of analysis you’re capable of.
Tariffs don’t “work” or “not work” it’s not a binary outcome. Just as measuring “the economy” is pretty much impossible, so is attributing economic outcomes to one single feature of the regulatory environment, They interact with the rest of the economic environment and some variety or work, production, trade, investment and distribution will occur. Over time all aspects of the system will change, adapt and react. Most changes have winners and losers and they can be counted or balanced off differently.
It it were paired with bank regulation and asset ownership regulation and a coherent industrial strategy, maybe also forex controls, maybe some counter cyclical macroeconomic policy (extremely unpopular these days) the outcomes would likely be quite different from a low regulation free for “all”. “All” is probably “a few with relatively unconstrained access to enough capital or credit to hoover up assets of the losers”.
But then a smaller subset of those things might also change the outcomes on their own. Either way it would be a matter of time and adaptation of a complex system.
It also depends what you think the objective is before you understand “success” or “failure”, the goals might well be social as much as economic. If the objective is trash the small scale asset ownig middle classes and enrich the elites economically then it might be working already.
I want to smoke the copium you’re high on 🤣
I can’t imagine that it happens. Usually tariffs are targeted but Trump is doing large scale blanket tariffs. The world economy is much more intertwined than it used to be. Even if factory jobs were brought back there are many problems with that.
Firstly to avoid tariffs everything for the product would need to be made in the US and very little is made completely in a single country these days.
Second the same applies to all the factory equipment.
Then you have to ask would factories employ people at large rates or would they automate?
I could go on but i feel like the point has been made why blanket tariffs are bad
He is not.
A tariff is a tax that increases the price of imported goods.
Tariffs are used to push people toward domestic alternatives to imported goods.
However, today, there are no domestic alternatives to most important goods.
So, all it’s doing is increasing the burden on the average person.
Companies are not going to invest in domestic production. They are going to spend that money lobbying to have tarriffs removed. Because guess what? Once tariffs go away, consumer prices are not going to go back to what they used to be. Instead, megacorps are going to pocket the difference as profit.
I suspect he is right. These tariffs will torpedo the economy just as intended.
There are, in fact, stupid questions.
I disagree: there are no stupid questions - but there are loaded questions, questions with wrong assumptions baked in or statements with a questionmark attached.
Small difference but I found my life way better when differentiating between “person doesn’t know l” and “person wants to be a troll”.
I don’t believe this question is being asked in good faith
Yes, as you said, they aren’t a new concept. We have plenty of evidence, of countries that tried that again and again. We know what he is doing is stupid.
Besides, your theory on tariffs won’t even get to be tested. Kidnapping people at random on the street and sending them to concentration camps has an overwhelmingly larger impact on the economy than the tariffs. People from outside of the US will only focus at this if you start to invade other countries, but at this point, nobody inside the US should be concerned with tariffs, at all.
Since the odds are so slim of tariffs at this scale further boosting an economy that was already pretty vigorous - I think the more important question is, who are you going to scapegoat when tariffs don’t work as advertised? Immigration? George Soros? Biden? Deep State? Panama and Greenland? Her emails? Will you swallow the doublethink when Murdoch and Bezos’s fake news tell you a recession is really sort of a boom, and vodka rations are up 8%?
The question is inconsequential.
The empirical and historical information we have demonstrates that this is a patently stupid policy.
The same way they’ll react if someone is right about the Earth being flat.
Wait, you were a child of the Great Depression? 'cause the US has been promoting free trade with low tariff rates since the end of WWII
He isn’t. He can’t be; not the way he has handled them.
Bringing industry and manufacturing back to US soil is actually not a bad idea at all but it’s a problem that needs to be tackled smartly and over a period of time so businesses can react. He is trying to force decades worth of economic migration in the span of a few months. For (hopefully) obvious reasons, that is impossible and the US economy is about to collapse.
And considering Trump, along with Musk at DOGE, have systematically destroyed economic and social safety-net programs… the aftermath of this is going to be catastrophic. The only way Trump is “right” about these tariffs is that they are an intentional sabotage of the US economy so him and his wealthy backers can cash out as the walls come crashing down. That is the goal and it’s going according to plan.
