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No, as much as I dislike Trump, a nice tariff could solve a lot of problems long term. Its after all how this country was built. Put in more economic terms, you
by StillBored 8y ago
No, as much as I dislike Trump, a nice tariff could solve a lot of problems long term. Its after all how this country was built. Put in more economic terms, you should be taxing things you want to discourage. Taxing income/work, while providing free trade with locations that have lower tax structures _WILL_ force jobs and industries offshore.
OTOH, a nice fat tariff on things you want to manufacture, and suddenly manufacturing them at home starts to make strong economic sense. Of course as evidence suggests that you also need a large enough market to assure that your not just paying 100x as much to support some inefficient factory.
- kaitai 8y agoOr you just decide you don't need to manufacture that thing after all. There are a lot of situations where "redesign so it doesn't need that version of the part" is cheaper than "build a US factory, train workers."
- pjc50 8y agoIf tariffs worked on their own, Brazil would be an electronics powerhouse. https://thenextweb.com/la/2012/09/30/from-brazil-cost-brazil-profit-why-electronics-expensive-brazil/ https://thenextweb.com/la/2012/09/30/from-brazil-cost-brazil...
- StillBored 8y agoThe NAFTA market is literally 10x the size of Brazil. Its not the same thing. Worse, tariffs tend to work if your protecting an existing industry from dumping/etc, not so much if your trying to grow one.
- erikpukinskis 8y agoYou can’t really compare the US/EU/China to individual smaller countries. There’s a scale above which the economics are quite different.