9 ms·

People that favor tariffs, want to bring manufacturing capabilities back to the US, in the hopes of creating jobs, and increasing national security by minimizin

by omilu 10mo ago

People that favor tariffs, want to bring manufacturing capabilities back to the US, in the hopes of creating jobs, and increasing national security by minimizing dependence on foreign governments for critical capabilities. This is legitimate cost benefit analysis not bellyfeel. People are aware of the increased cost associated with it.

schmidtleonard 10mo ago
Also, there is a massive conflict of interest associated with trusting the opinions of companies actively engaged in labor and environmental arbitrage. Opinions of politicians and think-tanks downstream of them in terms of funding, too. Even if those opinions are legitimately more educated and better reasoned, they are on the opposite side of the bargaining table from most people and paying attention to them alone is "who needs defense attorneys when we have prosecutors" level of madness. If anyone is looking for an expert opinion that breaks with the "free trade is good for everyone all of the time lah dee dah" consensus, Trade Wars are Class Wars by Klein & Pettis is a good read.
goda90 10mo ago
>want >in the hopes of But these are still bellyfeel words. What does more rigorous analysis of tariffs say about these things? Do they bring manufacturing back? Do they create jobs?
- irishcoffee 10mo ago
  Should the US adopt the European model? Open an inquiry to explore an investigation that could become en exploratory committee? Sounds like a bad idea.
- lo_zamoyski 10mo ago
  Well, ends are not bellyfeel. Bellyfeel here concerns the means. So, in this case, thinking that merely wanting an end somehow entails that the means employed are good and effective, because the intention is good. But as they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. It's not enough to want something good. You have to also use means that are good.
  - cindyllm 10mo ago
    [dead]
- hattmall 10mo ago
  What countries have fewer tariffs than the US? Yes tariffs have the ability to support domestic production, be that via bringing manufacturing back or creating jobs. 100%, these are actual results and why almost every country has them. The US has a weighted tariff average of around 3% which places them at the lowest of the list only above countries that have to import almost everything like New Zealand, Australia and Iceland, and around half of EU rates. So even with the random adjustments Trump has made the US would still need to effectively double tariff rates to be commiserate with the EU.
- SmirkingRevenge 10mo ago
  > What does more rigorous analysis of tariffs say about these things? Basically that tariffs are benign to harmful and most countries should stop using them. They often hurt manufacturing in the long run. They invite retaliation and shrink your market. Sure, some companies might eventually build some facilities here they otherwise wouldn't have, if they think the tariff regime will hold. But what ends up happening is that they just set up bespoke operations to serve this single market only and not for exporting. So instead of a factory to sell widgets to the whole world, we have a small factory to sell within the country only, where we all pay higher prices than the rest of the world. Meanwhile their primary global operations where they enjoy free(er) trade are cordoned off from our market. It's a bit like you see with American companies that move into China.
Miraste 10mo ago
Even ardent protectionists generally agree that tariffs can't bring jobs and manufacturing back by themselves. To work, they have to be accompanied by programs to nurture dead or failing domestic industries and rebuild them into something functional. Without that, you get results like the current state of US shipbuilding: pathetic, dysfunctional, and benefiting no one at all. Since there are no such programs, tariffs remain a cost with no benefit.
PaulHoule 10mo ago
So if X% of the economy benefits directly you might say 100-X% of the people would benefit secondarily because the people who benefit would have more money to buy services, building, etc. Trouble is in the short term that X is probably less than 5% so that multiplier effect is not that big. The industry that has the most intractable 'national security' issues in my mind is the drone industry. The problem there is that there are many American companies that would like to build expensive overpriced super-profitable drones for the military and other high-end consumers and none that want to build consumer-oriented drones at consumer-oriented prices. [1] Drones are transformational military because they are low cost and if you go to war with a handful of expensive overpriced drones against somebody who has an unlimited supply of cheap but deadly drones guess who ends up like the cavalry soldiers who faced tanks in WWI? There is a case for industrial policy there and tariffs could be a tool but you should really look at: (1) what the Chinese did to get DJI established and (2) what the EU did to make Airbus into a competitor for Boeing. From that latter point of view maybe we need a "western" competitor to DJI and not necessarily an "American" competitor. There are a lot of things we would find difficult about Chinese-style industrial policy. If I had to point to once critical difference it's that people here thought Solyndra was a scandal and maybe it was but China had Solyndra over and over again in the process to dominate solar panels and sure it hurt but... they dominate solar panels. [1] I think of how Microsoft decided each project in the games division had to be 30% profitable just because they have other hyperprofitable business lines, yet this is entirely delusional
mx7zysuj4xew 10mo ago
They have a vague notion of wanting the quality of life back like they had In the past, everything else goes completely over their heads
- steveBK123 10mo ago
  People want to have union jobs but retain Walmart prices as a consumer. This is the problem.
  - no_wizard 10mo ago
    European nations with heavy unionization and worker protections yet also have equivalent stores. The implementation details matter a lot. How did they get a vastly different outcome than what this suggests?
    - deleted 10mo ago
      [deleted]
  - bilekas 10mo ago
    You say it like it's one or the other. > Walmart annual gross profit for 2025 was $169.232B, a 7.12% increase from 2024. Walmart annual gross profit for 2024 was $157.983B, a 7.06% increase from 2023. Walmart annual gross profit for 2023 was $147.568B, a 2.65% increase from 2022. You're telling me poor walmart just HAVE to increase prices because they have to pay a living wage ? All thanks to those darn Unions ? This false dichotomy. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WMT/walmart/gross-profit#:~:text=Walmart%20annual%20gross%20profit%20for,a%202.65%25%20increase%20from%202022. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WMT/walmart/gross-...
    - steveBK123 10mo ago
      It’s more that American consumers are addicted to cheap imported goods Walmart sells than whatever wage Walmart pays in stores. Consumer goods have been low inflation (ex cars/food/housing) for decades because of overseas labor arbitrage and automation.
Hikikomori 10mo ago
You can use tariffs as a stick but you should also use a carrot. Hard to argue that trump didn't do tariffs in the dumbest way possible.
- bigstrat2003 10mo ago
  > Hard to argue that trump didn't do tariffs in the dumbest way possible. That is certainly one of my frustrations with Trump. He has this tendency to take things which aren't necessarily bad ideas, and pursue them in such stupid ways that he is poisoning public opinion of those concepts for a long time to come. Take tariffs. I really want the US to have manufacturing again, in fact it seems to me that it is genuinely an issue of national security that we don't have the ability to manufacture things. So I'm ok with tariffs in the abstract, as part of a larger plan to build up industry in the US. But of course that isn't what we got - we got something which is causing a lot of heartburn for (probably) no benefit to our manufacturing industry. So not only is Trump not effectively advancing the ends I would like, in the future when a politician suggests tariffs people will pattern match it to "that thing Trump did which really sucked" and reject the proposal out of hand even if the details are different. And it's like this for so many things Trump sets his mind to. It's really frustrating.
ang_cire 10mo ago
Tariffs don't do this, though. If you want to do this, you just have to pass laws saying companies are required to manufacture x% of their goods domestically. Putting tariffs in place with no other controls will just see companies shift costs downstream, which is exactly what is happening. Companies employ economists, lawyers, and legislators, all to ensure they can find workarounds for anything they don't like that's not 100% forced on them by a law (and will even flout the law if the cost/benefit works out). All evidence is that tariffs have actually tanked jobs, precisely because companies are assuming a defensive fiscal posture in response to what they view as a hostile fiscal policy.
- amypetrik8 10mo ago
  > If you want to do this, you just have to pass laws saying companies are required to manufacture x% of their goods domestically. and if they go below <x> they pay a fine yea? yea, thats what a tariff is. you have to manufacture x=100% domestically. otherwise 100-x non-domestic is taxed. that's a tariff.
  - parineum 10mo ago
    You're not wrong but the fine can be significantly higher than the tariff. Pay 300% tax if you don't manufacture 10% of your goods in the US. Furthermore, the penalties could escalate from repeat violations. It's a lot more flexible than a blanket tariff on an industry, country or specific good.
  - ang_cire 9mo ago
    > and if they go below <x> they pay a fine yea? Where did I say that? No, the point would be if you don't manufacture x% here, you can't sell here. That is the only surefire way to force domestic production. Tariffs don't encourage re-shoring and domestic production, they just raise the barrier of entry on consumers.
- beeflet 10mo ago
  Shifting costs downstream is the point. It imposes a cost on consumers for the externality they are creating by purchasing goods manufactured overseas. The method you describe is way more easily gamed than a tarrif. What constitutes x% of their goods? Tarrifs are more proportional to the externality we want to discourage.
harmmonica 10mo ago
An aside on tariffs, it’s a tax (either literally depending on the upcoming SCOTUS ruling, or if not in name then in whatever language SCOTUS decides to call an additional fee consumers pay when buying goods. But a tax either way). Relevant to the post, when supporters believe that “foreigners are swallowing 100% of the cost of the tariffs” they cheer them on. Those same supporters when they’re told the truth that consumers do end up with inflated prices because of them? Their support plummets.
- abustamam 10mo ago
  I feel like that's how anyone feels about anything a politician says. They say great things (sometimes even lies) about whatever agenda they're pushing, like tariffs only affecting non US people, or deporting criminal illegals, and supporters buy it. But then when they find out they're paying the tariffs, or their innocent gardener is being deported, then suddenly they're like "wait I didn't vote for this" even though they literally did, just under a different frame.
  - breppp 10mo ago
    These are people who vote according to their interests. There are two economic systems in the US which are divided according to the parties, one is highly globalized and resides in the cities and includes most of the people here, and the other is local and is composed of older industries. The local one was hit hard due to globalized policies and largely offshored, and these voters rightfully want to undo that, if that's possible is another case, but this is what Trump is doing. Obviously this is against the interest and going to hurt anyone whose job is closer to Spotify, Stockholm than some Mining Town, Montana
fennecbutt 10mo ago
Nah I think a lot of it is "own the libs" but this is a foreign perspective.
- parineum 10mo ago
  I don't know how that could make sense. Tariffs were on nobody's mind until Trump brought it up.
SmirkingRevenge 10mo ago
I think many or most tariff supporters aren't actually aware of the costs - because reasonable cost benefit analysis doesn't come out in their favor even a little. Among economists, this is basically a settled question. Hell, many tariff supporters still think tariffs are paid by the importers. Many are unaware that tariffs are likely to cost manufacturing jobs in the long run rather than bring them back.
- SmirkingRevenge 10mo ago
  *paid by the exporters
lo_zamoyski 10mo ago
> This is legitimate cost benefit analysis not bellyfeel. People are aware of the increased cost associated with it. Are they? Because I would expect far less complaining about the economy if this were true. You can't rebuild an industrial base overnight. Industrial supply chains and cultures of expertise take time to take root. That means not just some abstract incurred cost, but a very much felt burden on the average citizen. And with a weakened economy, it's difficult to see how this industrial base is supposed to materialize exactly.
standardUser 10mo ago
Nearly everyone we know has lived their entire lives in a world obsessed with reducing trade barriers, and grew up with a minimal general education on economics or geopolitics. So to assume anything more then a small subset of the population could talk coherently for 5 minutes on the topic of tariffs is, to me, absurd. Just look at how the general public responded to a surge in inflation after a couple decades of abnormally low rates. It's like asking someone if the Fed should raise or lower interest rates. It's not that people shouldn't have opinions on these things, just that most people don't care and among those who do, few have more than a TV-news level of understanding.
- pixl97 10mo ago
  >It's like asking someone if the Fed should raise or lower interest rates. The answer is they should lower them for me and raise them for you... God, I could get fabulously wealthy that way.
  - kyboren 10mo ago
    Right, like imagine if the Fed gave you some sort of preferential access and sweetheart low rates. Then you could borrow money from them at a low rate, lend it out at a higher rate, and profit from the difference. It would be like some sort of modern day alchemy: Creating money from thin air. Of course, if you become very large and there are widespread delinquencies that threaten your solvency, your chums at the Fed will happily give you infinite liquidity for collateral at sweetheart valuations. Or maybe they'll just start buying up debt in market operations to put you in the black again. Now, getting this kind of special treatment while mom and pop get foreclosed on their ARM and evicted seems a bit unfair. And, with the help of onerous zoning and permitting codes, it would tend to inflate house prices, with the perverse effect of forcing people to take your loans in order to own a home before your scheme inflates their prices even more--effectively becoming a private tax on home purchases. That's why we've made this obviously corrupt business illegal.
Nasrudith 10mo ago
Hahaha. No. They are innumerates who don't want numbers telling them how they feel is flat out wrong. They think manufacturing is cozy good paying jobs with absolutely zero additional pollution or problems. The same people who throw hissy fits over their electricity bill rising and act like data centers and AI are the antichrist. If they were really serious about reindustrializing they would realize that the US has an immigration problem - it doesn't have enough immigrants for their plan! Tariffs alone are a deeply unserious way to reindustrialize.
FatherOfCurses 10mo ago
Are you seriously telling me that Joe Lunchbox who supports tariffs truly understands what the cost increase is going to be for having a product manufactured in the USA, and is going to be willing to pay that increased cost? After decades of Walmart shoving out cheap Chinese goods driving prices down?

by omilu 10mo ago

schmidtleonard 10mo ago

Also, there is a massive conflict of interest associated with trusting the opinions of companies actively engaged in labor and environmental arbitrage. Opinions of politicians and think-tanks downstream of them in terms of funding, too. Even if those opinions are legitimately more educated and better reasoned, they are on the opposite side of the bargaining table from most people and paying attention to them alone is "who needs defense attorneys when we have prosecutors" level of madness. If anyone is looking for an expert opinion that breaks with the "free trade is good for everyone all of the time lah dee dah" consensus, Trade Wars are Class Wars by Klein & Pettis is a good read.

goda90 10mo ago

>want >in the hopes of But these are still bellyfeel words. What does more rigorous analysis of tariffs say about these things? Do they bring manufacturing back? Do they create jobs?

irishcoffee 10mo ago
Should the US adopt the European model? Open an inquiry to explore an investigation that could become en exploratory committee? Sounds like a bad idea.
lo_zamoyski 10mo ago
Well, ends are not bellyfeel. Bellyfeel here concerns the means. So, in this case, thinking that merely wanting an end somehow entails that the means employed are good and effective, because the intention is good. But as they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. It's not enough to want something good. You have to also use means that are good.
- cindyllm 10mo ago
  [dead]
hattmall 10mo ago
What countries have fewer tariffs than the US? Yes tariffs have the ability to support domestic production, be that via bringing manufacturing back or creating jobs. 100%, these are actual results and why almost every country has them. The US has a weighted tariff average of around 3% which places them at the lowest of the list only above countries that have to import almost everything like New Zealand, Australia and Iceland, and around half of EU rates. So even with the random adjustments Trump has made the US would still need to effectively double tariff rates to be commiserate with the EU.
SmirkingRevenge 10mo ago
> What does more rigorous analysis of tariffs say about these things? Basically that tariffs are benign to harmful and most countries should stop using them. They often hurt manufacturing in the long run. They invite retaliation and shrink your market. Sure, some companies might eventually build some facilities here they otherwise wouldn't have, if they think the tariff regime will hold. But what ends up happening is that they just set up bespoke operations to serve this single market only and not for exporting. So instead of a factory to sell widgets to the whole world, we have a small factory to sell within the country only, where we all pay higher prices than the rest of the world. Meanwhile their primary global operations where they enjoy free(er) trade are cordoned off from our market. It's a bit like you see with American companies that move into China.

Miraste 10mo ago

Even ardent protectionists generally agree that tariffs can't bring jobs and manufacturing back by themselves. To work, they have to be accompanied by programs to nurture dead or failing domestic industries and rebuild them into something functional. Without that, you get results like the current state of US shipbuilding: pathetic, dysfunctional, and benefiting no one at all. Since there are no such programs, tariffs remain a cost with no benefit.

PaulHoule 10mo ago

So if X% of the economy benefits directly you might say 100-X% of the people would benefit secondarily because the people who benefit would have more money to buy services, building, etc. Trouble is in the short term that X is probably less than 5% so that multiplier effect is not that big. The industry that has the most intractable 'national security' issues in my mind is the drone industry. The problem there is that there are many American companies that would like to build expensive overpriced super-profitable drones for the military and other high-end consumers and none that want to build consumer-oriented drones at consumer-oriented prices. [1] Drones are transformational military because they are low cost and if you go to war with a handful of expensive overpriced drones against somebody who has an unlimited supply of cheap but deadly drones guess who ends up like the cavalry soldiers who faced tanks in WWI? There is a case for industrial policy there and tariffs could be a tool but you should really look at: (1) what the Chinese did to get DJI established and (2) what the EU did to make Airbus into a competitor for Boeing. From that latter point of view maybe we need a "western" competitor to DJI and not necessarily an "American" competitor. There are a lot of things we would find difficult about Chinese-style industrial policy. If I had to point to once critical difference it's that people here thought Solyndra was a scandal and maybe it was but China had Solyndra over and over again in the process to dominate solar panels and sure it hurt but... they dominate solar panels. [1] I think of how Microsoft decided each project in the games division had to be 30% profitable just because they have other hyperprofitable business lines, yet this is entirely delusional

mx7zysuj4xew 10mo ago

They have a vague notion of wanting the quality of life back like they had In the past, everything else goes completely over their heads

steveBK123 10mo ago
People want to have union jobs but retain Walmart prices as a consumer. This is the problem.
- no_wizard 10mo ago
  European nations with heavy unionization and worker protections yet also have equivalent stores. The implementation details matter a lot. How did they get a vastly different outcome than what this suggests?
  - deleted 10mo ago
    [deleted]
- bilekas 10mo ago
  You say it like it's one or the other. > Walmart annual gross profit for 2025 was $169.232B, a 7.12% increase from 2024. Walmart annual gross profit for 2024 was $157.983B, a 7.06% increase from 2023. Walmart annual gross profit for 2023 was $147.568B, a 2.65% increase from 2022. You're telling me poor walmart just HAVE to increase prices because they have to pay a living wage ? All thanks to those darn Unions ? This false dichotomy. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WMT/walmart/gross-profit#:~:text=Walmart%20annual%20gross%20profit%20for,a%202.65%25%20increase%20from%202022. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WMT/walmart/gross-...
  - steveBK123 10mo ago
    It’s more that American consumers are addicted to cheap imported goods Walmart sells than whatever wage Walmart pays in stores. Consumer goods have been low inflation (ex cars/food/housing) for decades because of overseas labor arbitrage and automation.

Hikikomori 10mo ago

You can use tariffs as a stick but you should also use a carrot. Hard to argue that trump didn't do tariffs in the dumbest way possible.

bigstrat2003 10mo ago
> Hard to argue that trump didn't do tariffs in the dumbest way possible. That is certainly one of my frustrations with Trump. He has this tendency to take things which aren't necessarily bad ideas, and pursue them in such stupid ways that he is poisoning public opinion of those concepts for a long time to come. Take tariffs. I really want the US to have manufacturing again, in fact it seems to me that it is genuinely an issue of national security that we don't have the ability to manufacture things. So I'm ok with tariffs in the abstract, as part of a larger plan to build up industry in the US. But of course that isn't what we got - we got something which is causing a lot of heartburn for (probably) no benefit to our manufacturing industry. So not only is Trump not effectively advancing the ends I would like, in the future when a politician suggests tariffs people will pattern match it to "that thing Trump did which really sucked" and reject the proposal out of hand even if the details are different. And it's like this for so many things Trump sets his mind to. It's really frustrating.

ang_cire 10mo ago

Tariffs don't do this, though. If you want to do this, you just have to pass laws saying companies are required to manufacture x% of their goods domestically. Putting tariffs in place with no other controls will just see companies shift costs downstream, which is exactly what is happening. Companies employ economists, lawyers, and legislators, all to ensure they can find workarounds for anything they don't like that's not 100% forced on them by a law (and will even flout the law if the cost/benefit works out). All evidence is that tariffs have actually tanked jobs, precisely because companies are assuming a defensive fiscal posture in response to what they view as a hostile fiscal policy.

amypetrik8 10mo ago
> If you want to do this, you just have to pass laws saying companies are required to manufacture x% of their goods domestically. and if they go below <x> they pay a fine yea? yea, thats what a tariff is. you have to manufacture x=100% domestically. otherwise 100-x non-domestic is taxed. that's a tariff.
- parineum 10mo ago
  You're not wrong but the fine can be significantly higher than the tariff. Pay 300% tax if you don't manufacture 10% of your goods in the US. Furthermore, the penalties could escalate from repeat violations. It's a lot more flexible than a blanket tariff on an industry, country or specific good.
- ang_cire 9mo ago
  > and if they go below <x> they pay a fine yea? Where did I say that? No, the point would be if you don't manufacture x% here, you can't sell here. That is the only surefire way to force domestic production. Tariffs don't encourage re-shoring and domestic production, they just raise the barrier of entry on consumers.
beeflet 10mo ago
Shifting costs downstream is the point. It imposes a cost on consumers for the externality they are creating by purchasing goods manufactured overseas. The method you describe is way more easily gamed than a tarrif. What constitutes x% of their goods? Tarrifs are more proportional to the externality we want to discourage.

harmmonica 10mo ago

An aside on tariffs, it’s a tax (either literally depending on the upcoming SCOTUS ruling, or if not in name then in whatever language SCOTUS decides to call an additional fee consumers pay when buying goods. But a tax either way). Relevant to the post, when supporters believe that “foreigners are swallowing 100% of the cost of the tariffs” they cheer them on. Those same supporters when they’re told the truth that consumers do end up with inflated prices because of them? Their support plummets.

abustamam 10mo ago
I feel like that's how anyone feels about anything a politician says. They say great things (sometimes even lies) about whatever agenda they're pushing, like tariffs only affecting non US people, or deporting criminal illegals, and supporters buy it. But then when they find out they're paying the tariffs, or their innocent gardener is being deported, then suddenly they're like "wait I didn't vote for this" even though they literally did, just under a different frame.
- breppp 10mo ago
  These are people who vote according to their interests. There are two economic systems in the US which are divided according to the parties, one is highly globalized and resides in the cities and includes most of the people here, and the other is local and is composed of older industries. The local one was hit hard due to globalized policies and largely offshored, and these voters rightfully want to undo that, if that's possible is another case, but this is what Trump is doing. Obviously this is against the interest and going to hurt anyone whose job is closer to Spotify, Stockholm than some Mining Town, Montana

fennecbutt 10mo ago

Nah I think a lot of it is "own the libs" but this is a foreign perspective.

parineum 10mo ago
I don't know how that could make sense. Tariffs were on nobody's mind until Trump brought it up.

SmirkingRevenge 10mo ago

I think many or most tariff supporters aren't actually aware of the costs - because reasonable cost benefit analysis doesn't come out in their favor even a little. Among economists, this is basically a settled question. Hell, many tariff supporters still think tariffs are paid by the importers. Many are unaware that tariffs are likely to cost manufacturing jobs in the long run rather than bring them back.

SmirkingRevenge 10mo ago
*paid by the exporters

lo_zamoyski 10mo ago

> This is legitimate cost benefit analysis not bellyfeel. People are aware of the increased cost associated with it. Are they? Because I would expect far less complaining about the economy if this were true. You can't rebuild an industrial base overnight. Industrial supply chains and cultures of expertise take time to take root. That means not just some abstract incurred cost, but a very much felt burden on the average citizen. And with a weakened economy, it's difficult to see how this industrial base is supposed to materialize exactly.

standardUser 10mo ago

Nearly everyone we know has lived their entire lives in a world obsessed with reducing trade barriers, and grew up with a minimal general education on economics or geopolitics. So to assume anything more then a small subset of the population could talk coherently for 5 minutes on the topic of tariffs is, to me, absurd. Just look at how the general public responded to a surge in inflation after a couple decades of abnormally low rates. It's like asking someone if the Fed should raise or lower interest rates. It's not that people shouldn't have opinions on these things, just that most people don't care and among those who do, few have more than a TV-news level of understanding.

pixl97 10mo ago
>It's like asking someone if the Fed should raise or lower interest rates. The answer is they should lower them for me and raise them for you... God, I could get fabulously wealthy that way.
- kyboren 10mo ago
  Right, like imagine if the Fed gave you some sort of preferential access and sweetheart low rates. Then you could borrow money from them at a low rate, lend it out at a higher rate, and profit from the difference. It would be like some sort of modern day alchemy: Creating money from thin air. Of course, if you become very large and there are widespread delinquencies that threaten your solvency, your chums at the Fed will happily give you infinite liquidity for collateral at sweetheart valuations. Or maybe they'll just start buying up debt in market operations to put you in the black again. Now, getting this kind of special treatment while mom and pop get foreclosed on their ARM and evicted seems a bit unfair. And, with the help of onerous zoning and permitting codes, it would tend to inflate house prices, with the perverse effect of forcing people to take your loans in order to own a home before your scheme inflates their prices even more--effectively becoming a private tax on home purchases. That's why we've made this obviously corrupt business illegal.

Nasrudith 10mo ago

Hahaha. No. They are innumerates who don't want numbers telling them how they feel is flat out wrong. They think manufacturing is cozy good paying jobs with absolutely zero additional pollution or problems. The same people who throw hissy fits over their electricity bill rising and act like data centers and AI are the antichrist. If they were really serious about reindustrializing they would realize that the US has an immigration problem - it doesn't have enough immigrants for their plan! Tariffs alone are a deeply unserious way to reindustrialize.

FatherOfCurses 10mo ago

Are you seriously telling me that Joe Lunchbox who supports tariffs truly understands what the cost increase is going to be for having a product manufactured in the USA, and is going to be willing to pay that increased cost? After decades of Walmart shoving out cheap Chinese goods driving prices down?