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KillBoomersBeheadBoomers cut/medi/care Unapologetic shitlib  25d ago (text post) 399 thread views #348885 earned 136 coins from votes

Can someone TLDR me on why Trump is so fond of protectionism and tariffs?

@pizzashill

@Ubie

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The heckin good faith argument for tariffs is encouraging local production. If you don't look into any numbers or understand the global economy you might think this is a good idea. I imagine trump in particular is thinking tons of factory job the boomers remember coming back, because china is only doing it 20% cheaper of course :marseyclueless: . Modern western economies of course are much more service and technical based, trying to compete on manual labour power with china and India is impossible.

Trade wars don't really help anyway because the end state is going back 100 years to only consuming what is made nearby, no countries will collapse because of not having out of season bananas in the artic circle, but having to subsist on turnips and catfish because your government can't play nice isn't much fun.

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US should shift more manufacturing from China to Vietnam, Philippines, and Indonesia. Maybe the tariffs will encourage this. :marseyshrug:

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That's what TPP was.

:chad!black2: :marseybear::marseyrefrigerator:

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It will never be a real Pacific Partnership....

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:marseyballsinyourface:

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I'm not sure if continuing down our current path is viable. Transforming into a service based economy seems like a bad idea in retrospect now that we're dealing with elite overproduction- seems like so many businesses are built around unnecessary middlemen and general rent seeking, usually involving foreign made goods. Also, giving China the leverage to put U.S. in a chokehold in an upcoming conflict (i.e. rare metals and semiconductors) is basically suicide.

No point in trade wars around specialty foods/resources that the U.S. climate/geography is not capable of producing though, I agree with that.

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You can't make more rare earth minerals appear in your borders though, you eventually have to play the game of what does your country provide of value for the other countries resources.

Oil countries like Saudi are the other side of the coin, they produce nothing of value and exist to consume slop the west provides for their natural resources

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Thankfully we are becoming a much more energy secure country. I believe the U.S. has a lot of minerals out west that could be developed, but bureaucracy has slowed that down. I have hope tho.

We could always melt Greenland and forcefully extract her of resources :marseycoomer2:

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Minerals aren't real. People don't export production to China because of its minerals, it's because of its massive amounts of cheap labor, and lately because of its medium-level technical abilities (as opposed to say Vietnam or India where labor is cheaper but you're capped on quality, you can have them make shirts sure but you can't have them make PCBs). As China increases its innovation and development, American manufacturing may contract somewhat but it'll also be required to improve its own innovation and development to call for its higher price. If it was only these two countries that existed it'd be a net zero exchange but because other places do as well it'd only benefit the both of us, allowing both countries to charge higher from other places and each other.

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I was talking about developing resources so that they can later be used in manufacturing. Reshoring doesn't make sense when all of the raw materials are coming from abroad and can be cut off by communist governments- I get that they depend on us for revenues, but when shit hits the fan we won't be able to depend on them for anything. I know it sounds corny, but in a Cold War scenario it makes sense.

I think manufacturers are learning to innovate, as demonstrated by all of the investments in new factories in Arizona/the South/etc. Notice that union presence in these locations is much lower, which might allow companies to not get put in a stranglehold like last time.

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