this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2025
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This comic misses the incentive for local businesses to chase the new profit margin created by the tariff.
If your competition is import goods, you may sell a quality product at $2, with the import version at $1.50. If the tariff causes the import to rise to $2.50, then the local capitalist will raise to $2.40. There’s no reason not to take the extra profit made from a selfish perspective.
Alternatively, the importer could leave the market. But now you have a monopoly, which again, is anti-competitive and leads to raised prices and malicious practices without consumer protections, which the administration seems to be firing.
These are great moves for capital owners to reshape and control market. Consumers will suffer.
This implies that local availability of competitive products exists, which for the vast majority of things in the US is not the case. So many of our goods are made overseas and imported.
Tariffs are going to raise consumer expenses till one of two things happens: Local production ramps up and provides local goods (at likely a similar or higher price because our wages are higher than overseas) or a political change occurs that results in the removal of the tariffs. Either way US consumers are going to feel the increased cost of goods for the foreseeable future...
Hypothetically this could create business incentives for building local capacity, but realistically manufacturers are not going to invest with the assumption that these tariffs will be permanent. Eventually either Trump will back down or he'll be replaced by someone else, and the tariffs will end. Why invest in manufacturing when there's no long term guarantees for profitability?
Agreed that the typical, more realistic case is what will happen.
I’ve gotten into arguments with other keyboard warriors over this point, so it’s something I mention when tariffs are discussed.