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The goal of the tariffs is to improve the bargaining position of America in getting better trade deals with China... not to move manufacturing back to the US.
by chrischen 7y ago
The goal of the tariffs is to improve the bargaining position of America in getting better trade deals with China... not to move manufacturing back to the US.
That might be what’s fed to the average Joe the plumber Trump supporter but common sense easily precludes that motivation. To actually move manufacturing back you’d have to tariff every country with a lower cost of living than the US, and that’s most of the world. You’d have to massively reduce consumption in the US since such a policy will greatly redistribute wealth to domestic the physical laborer. And in the long term, because of the unsustainable labor costs here eventually automation and robotics R&D will catch up to destroy those jobs anyways.
- JohnJamesRambo 7y agoCommon sense is not a strong suit of this administration.
- chrischen 7y agoI don’t think the administration is deluded by that reality, but many of the supporters are. They just wanted jobs and Trump said yes, but he’s essentially misleading them.
- will4274 7y ago"fed" is the word that is offensive. The notion that Trump supporters repeat lines that are fed to them like an actor on a stage, rather than analyzing different explanations and coming to a conclusion on which one was most accurate. Reinforced by "common sense easily precludes"
- chrischen 7y agoWhen a group indiscriminately accepts the words of someone they are being "fed." This happens for both liberals and conservatives. I'm describing the character of that specific subgroup of Trump supporters which are being fed his words, not that all Trump supporters are being fed.
- mieseratte 7y ago> The goal of the tariffs is to improve the bargaining position of America in getting better trade deals with China... not to move manufacturing back to the US. Alternatively, to decouple US and Chinese trade as China is a major strategic rival to the US. > That might be what’s fed to the average Joe the plumber Trump supporter but common sense easily precludes that motivation. Perhaps one should avoid thinly veiled political insults. Particularly as it blinds one to alternative possibilities.
- chrischen 7y agoI’m not insulting. It’s true blue collar workers flocked to Trump hoping to bring back manufacturing. Joe the Plumber was the epitome of a blue collar Republican.
- Jorge1o1 7y agoYou would have to tariff every country with a comparative advantage in manufacturing cheap goods, not just “the cheapest countries” in general. Otherwise, we’d be moving our production to Pakistan and not India (a country with a comparably low cost of living)
- klingonopera 7y agoSupply chains are another reason, why shifting production to a lower-cost labour country is not done overnight.
- chrischen 7y agoIt’s also why they wouldn’t shift to the US overnight. And for over many nights, it’d still not shift to the US which is my point.
- chrischen 7y agoThe biggest factor in cheap manufacturing is labor cost. Even if the place doesn’t have existing infrastructure it’s better investment there than domestically. The article even says it: most companies have stayed in China or moved to other countries like Vietnam.
- klingonopera 7y agoIt's even more likely that China will switch to a higher level of automation and robotics before the West does. They already have the production, and can incrementally adapt and upgrade, whereas in the West, it would have to be (re-)built from the ground-up with intent to directly compete against low-labor markets (though arguably, in some industries this would probably be an advantage), and that would require far more investments up front, which carries a higher risk.
- chrischen 7y agoThe west is an information and trchnology economy. If it has specialties in anything it’s in high tech. As fast rising and impressive as Chinese tech is, it’s still generally inferior. We’re not not scrambling for Chinese devices because of tariffs, they’re just usually coming in on the low end. Manufacturing is also the low-value end of the supply chain. Building up expertise at the top (Apple, Microsoft, Google, Intel, AMD, Nvidia—level tech) is exponentially harder than building up the bottom end.
- klingonopera 7y agoThe first iPhone rattled the headlines, but I'd argue the third or fourth generation is what really settled it into the mainstream. In other words, the West may the first to have fully automated factories and warehouses, but China is likely to be the first to deploy them on a large-scale.
- C1sc0cat 7y agoUnlikely they have to keep the working and middle class happy
- klingonopera 7y agoAnd if that's no longer possible, it's easier to contain an unhappy populace in an Orwellian than in a "Huxlodian" state.
- 7y ago