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Really not the time to sleep on China if you want to keep your Imperial empire guys.
China completely ravaged US manufacturing and y'all are still in the corner wanking over 'cheap Chinese product.'
China doesn't just make the cheap things you use. They make essentially everything you use.
Stop licking your wounds with petulent little jabs like this and start finding a way to compete. You know, the way your sacred free market dictates that you should.
The right time for Chinese tariffs was 1980.
Not arguing. But why that year specifically?
Ball had started rolling on Reform and Opening Up by about that time
It's roughly when the US shut down practically all of our manufacturing plants and laid off the vast majority of our manufacturing talent.
We've had some 40 years of mostly not passing down the knowledge of how to manufacture things well.
What manufacturing we still have is pretty amazing, but the demand for cross training - should those jobs return - is going to be way more than the remaining available talent can take on.
Bringing it back in 1980 would have given us a shot to pass on all the skills of the previous generation of skilled tradespeople.
I have watched Chinese tool steel and heat treat ability improve massively over my career. The steel went from chineseium to the cheap usable option in a shop.
Tool and alloy steels are a basic measure of a country's industrial ability. That genie isn't going back in the bottle.
The gutting of US manufacturing and unions has been a crime against blue collar folks that most don't understand. Few new machinists stuck through the recession of the aughts. There are few machinists in my age bracket. There is no magic switch to rebuild manufacturing in the USA. It takes years to create competent machinists and we don't have enough competent machinists to do the training. The apprenticeship programs have mostly been eliminated, the guys that taught me had journeyman's papers but those programs were gone by the time I came up.
I've been lucky enough to grow three machinists, green to competent, in my career. Had to fight with management/corporate to do that much. I know of one that has already left the trade.
Ironically enough, a great solution to this problem would be to bring in Chinese experts to train American workers. The USD still spends.
All I can do is mass deportation.
I'm approximating, but it's in that general time period when manufacturing was moving to China, and with very little concern for the American worker.
She got thinner
Egg prices
The Trump administration is destroying our great nation's thick milfs
Can't afford avocado toast anymore
If tariffs worked at all like Donnie portrays, to revitalize domestic production and promote local jobs, to help balance a trade deficit, and allow for market choice based on quality more than price, it might be useful.
The reality though is that the American manufacturing and industry space is functionally dead. We've shipped production elsewhere to reduce costs and that's not something that'll get reversed in any short order. All his big talk will do nothing beyond get the additional costs passed onto the buying public while the producers keep laughing all the way to the bank. They'll take any extra taxes gained and put it into the military budget and continue stripping public good services to the bone all while cheering how great we've become. Look at the new carrier group we'll build! So much winning for us both domestically and abroad!
They'll take any extra taxes gained and put it into the military budget
Trump is actually trying to cut the military budget too. Which is actually problematic because we have a lot of equipment (particularly aircraft) that is aging out and we already can't develop and/or manufacture replacements fast enough
Even if he did, which I really doubt since nobody ever does, I'm pretty sure they could find a way to rearrange some spending in that, what is it 800-900 Billion now?
I wonder what Project 2025 has to say about that
Right? This does nothing without initatives to help people launch manufacturing start-ups
Here's my uneducated take, with little to no understanding of what's going on in detail:
US public debt is at extraordinary levels. The treasury is hesitant to issue more debt and Donny doesn't want to start his tenure with raising taxes on poor people (that will come in a few months, under the pretense to raise money for war with China or some shit). Therefore, he needs to collect money, whilst appeasing to right nationalists & business. Enter: Tarrifs.
Destroy my armchair take!
He’s already planned tax “cuts” that only cut taxes for those making north of $500k/yr. They go up for everyone under that. So we got both!
At the federal level taxes aren't used to pay debt, they're used to reduce the money supply. That money goes into a shredder, and is functionally unrelated to the money printed.
This seems very odd... Can you give me a source on that? Both the shredding of federal tax income and the relation to public expenditure? It appears I have much to learn
What is this AI dribble?
The last time we had a balanced budged was during the Clinton years. Now I was barely out of high school and hardly paid a bit of attention to such matters at the time, but then there was a little event towards the end of 2001 that turned everything upside down. The military and police became supreme concerns and letting The Market™ fix everything was the name of the game under Bush. So much so that we got to experience the 2008 collapse during the Obama years in a major part due to the banks giving loans to people who couldn't pay them on properties that where massively over valued. We've never managed to put things back in order since, in part because the climate got so polarized that 'my team' could NEVER support anything in the least that would be supported by THEM.
Throw in a dash of citizens united completely shifting any sense of public input into politics for anyone not a multi millionaire or more and some populist prattling about the good-ol-days and you get what we have now where a big chunk of people who can't care to think for a moment of the actual policies being proposed beyond which team put it forth and you have a lovely recipe for an open pillaging by those with the power to do so.
Yeah, part of me wants to just shut off the news for the next several years, but unfortunately being prepared requires being aware...
True, but I don't think anyone expects a balanced US budget at this stage of global economics. IMO a loss of the AAA rating would tank the economy significantly and risk a massive corporate backlash. This will make the government's stance untenable and cannot simply be solved by issuing unlimited debt.
The next four years will be fascinating to watch.
are you watching from outside or inside? i got the feeling one is less stressful than the other
For someone with family ties in Ukraine, being on the outside is still incredibly terrifying. Let alone that Muskfuck is now promoting AFD
When America gets sick, the whole world coughs.
Sadly we're all in the inside of this one
I’m gonna guess this might be different 4 years from now. I would think it’s in the best interest of other countries to lessen their dependence on the USA for certain things.
Sometimes you have to cut out the cancer and then let it heal.
From the outside I’m mostly concerned about the future of the NATO alliance. Trump threatening to annex NATO allies wasn’t on my bingo card.
It's stressful enough from the outside 😰
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...
And meanwhile many small businesses will go down since they don't have the bargaining power like their bigger competitors. The rising prices of their suppliers will completely wipe out the tiny margins they had. Even if they raise their prices their competitors can undercut them even more aggressively now. Also quality and quantities of products will go down.
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.
"Junk" lolol, the computer in your pocket? Or the drones capable of turning the tide in a war? 🤔
That stuff was never cheap though
They are cheap compared to what they would cost if they were made on US Soil by Americans