>I won't defend these tariffs, or their rollout. But I will say that our dependence on Chinese manufacturing (and engineering, these days) is not good for our nation.
Not OP, but it's clear that slow, low, scheduled tariffs are how you move manufacturing. When a business say, hmm... in 5 years, we're going to be unprofitable, we should probably invest in an American fab.
This is also why you pass the tariffs through the legislature and not via some literal "emergency" order, which means that the tariffs could disappear at literally any point, and probably will if things get bad. So what's the point of investment if you have a better than 50-50 chance and you're going to feel the pain either way?
It's just exactly the opposite way anyone who is seriously trying to shift manufacturing would go about doing it. There is also some strong dollar issues, but that's really complicated.
With what we know now, or going back in time and making different decisions than what were made? offshoring isn't necessarily the wrong decision, but sending it all to one country with hostile form of government to your own does seem like a bad move. China just happened to be smart enough to develop in this way where Mexico or other Latin American countries did not, nor did other Asian countries. They are all now trying to play catch up, but only after China became THE place for all of this manufacturing.
There is no overnight solve at this point. But a solution would be working to help countries with more friendly government to your own to build up their manufacturing with the promise of guaranteed business to help prop it up by moving away from the hostile government.
No, China imposes rather large tariffs on external goods to force internal consumption. That's beyond a bunch of other measures that prevent foreigners from starting businesses or owning property.
Of course as other comments in the thread have pointed out: a much smarter way to roll out tariffs to encourage domestic manufacturing is by slowing ramping them up to give industry time to react.
My lathe was $3400. A week later the price is now $4000 thanks to tariffs. There are no domestic manufacturers left and banks/Wall Street aren't going to finance someone spinning up a machine tools company. The difference in price isn't enough to erase China's excessive subsidies to their industry combined with their lower labor pay rates so even if someone did try to compete they still couldn't match $4000. My best guess is more like $6-7k. In the end all the tariffs are doing is making it more difficult to get into machining.
If idiots and sycophants weren't steering the ship the US would have a state-run investment bank that partnered with private capital to offer investments to anyone who wanted to start a business. Frankly I think there is lots of opportunity in various spaces like machine tools to make innovative products at all scales from the small hobbyist to big industrial shops. It won't be a 1000x return though so no one cares.
> That's beyond a bunch of other measures that prevent foreigners from starting businesses or owning property.
In defense of the comment you're responding to: measures like making it impossible to compete by subsidizing their domestic competition. (I wasn't trying to suggest China and others do not use tariffs)
There's also another effect though : that money goes to the government. What is it going to do with it ?
Not expecting a positive effect from that from this administration, but in theory there could be one. Like that investment bank. Or just lowered taxes.
> If idiots and sycophants weren't steering the ship the US would have a state-run investment bank that partnered with private capital to offer investments to anyone who wanted to start a business.
Fwiw this sounds like an aspect of fascism. Just defining, not criticizing. It clearly works for China.
Here's a different argument: there's nothing to solve in relation to Chinese manufacturing.
The US "dependence" on Chinese manufacturing is not a problem at all. It's mostly just a wedge/scapegoat/distraction issue to placate constituents who have faced decades of declining general welfare due mostly to domestic policy and not trade issues.
For example, trade policy with China didn't force the government to lower taxes on the wealthy to cut public college funding (college used to be free in California, where do y'all think Silicon Valley's innovations came from?), refuse to implement single-payer universal healthcare, or refuse to address the housing affordability crisis.
Have a diverse economy and tell corporations "no" when they want to move manufacturing to other nations. Or tell them to delist off American markets and move the actual company to the cheaper nation. They want the protections and freedom of the US economy but they don't want to pay for any of it. That's called a parasite and they aren't needed here.
How would you solve it differently?