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Is anyone expecting tariffs to improve global competitive advantage? Tariffs may work towards an isolationist goal of producing and consuming our own goods. Ta

Is anyone expecting tariffs to improve global competitive advantage? Tariffs may work towards an isolationist goal of producing and consuming our own goods. Tariffs are an attempt to unwind globalization though and disconnect our markets from the rest of the world. Whether it makes us more competitive globally is really a non-goal. It could happen if our resources, labor, and manufacturing costs are lower than other countries but that's extremely complex to predict even if you wanted to try.

aaomidi 2y ago
Yep I think this is really the important point. Free trade has its own set of negative consequences. Namely that it’s good for owners of the means of production but not for the workers. What’s interesting to me is that tech is effectively the last “American made manufacturing”, and the relative lack of outsourcing (compared to other forms of manufacturing) has kept tech workers powerful. The same logic of h1b workers weakening the American citizen tech worker, applies to free trade.
- _heimdall 2y ago
  > tech is effectively the last “American made manufacturing” Its at least the largest industry manufacturing here, I'd expect. I have friends that work in manufacturing in the US though, it does happen. One, for example, runs a family business making steel buildings and storm shelters. They use American made steel if I'm not mistaken, I'm less certain about other inputs like the paint or equipment used (certainly the welders, heavy equipment, etc are foreign). Another works in the automotive industry. Parts come in from overseas and we largely just assemble vehicles here today, but I'm not so sure how different that is from software. I write code on foreign hardware that runs in someone else's server farm also running foreign hardware. Hell, when Microsoft was still shipping software on CDs you may have noticed a little fine print mentioning the Caribbean island on which the disc was technically manufactured. US employees designed the software, but for tax purposes the manufacturing technically happened offshore. Software is a huge industry, but it is still heavily dependent on globalization.
  - Aloisius 2y ago
    > Hell, when Microsoft was still shipping software on CDs you may have noticed a little fine print mentioning the Caribbean island on which the disc was technically manufactured. I don't recall this at all. What software was it? Going through my box of ancient software, they all either say made in the US either on the CD/DVD or on the packaging, except for a copy of Office 97 and Office 2007 which says made in Puerto Rico (which is the US). They certainly had CDs pressed in other countries for foreign markets. I imagine some foreign made laptops might have come with CD/DVDs pressed in those countries.
    - _heimdall 2y ago
      Office was the example I had in mind. The discs sold in the US were printed outside the US, they weren't only for foreign markets. I don't recall if Windows discs were printed outside the US, though I do believe binaries were compiled and signed outside the US.
      - Aloisius 2y ago
        Are you certain the island in the Caribbean you were thinking of wasn't Puerto Rico? I can't imagine what other island you'd make them on. All six versions of Office I have seemed to be made in the US. They're all retail copies however.
        _heimdall 2y ago
        Puerto Rico sounds right, and if you still have a physical office disc with that on it that totally makes sense.
JKCalhoun 2y ago
> Tariffs may work towards an isolationist goal of producing and consuming our own goods. At this point I'm not even sure that is true. I think instead we'll just see the "cost of doing business" passed along to us consumers.
- _heimdall 2y ago
  Oh I think that must be the case. We've spent decades profiting by externalizing many of the costs of our consumption onto other parts of the world. Isolationism means we now how to deal with those costs or change our consumption.

aaomidi 2y ago

Yep I think this is really the important point. Free trade has its own set of negative consequences. Namely that it’s good for owners of the means of production but not for the workers. What’s interesting to me is that tech is effectively the last “American made manufacturing”, and the relative lack of outsourcing (compared to other forms of manufacturing) has kept tech workers powerful. The same logic of h1b workers weakening the American citizen tech worker, applies to free trade.

_heimdall 2y ago
> tech is effectively the last “American made manufacturing” Its at least the largest industry manufacturing here, I'd expect. I have friends that work in manufacturing in the US though, it does happen. One, for example, runs a family business making steel buildings and storm shelters. They use American made steel if I'm not mistaken, I'm less certain about other inputs like the paint or equipment used (certainly the welders, heavy equipment, etc are foreign). Another works in the automotive industry. Parts come in from overseas and we largely just assemble vehicles here today, but I'm not so sure how different that is from software. I write code on foreign hardware that runs in someone else's server farm also running foreign hardware. Hell, when Microsoft was still shipping software on CDs you may have noticed a little fine print mentioning the Caribbean island on which the disc was technically manufactured. US employees designed the software, but for tax purposes the manufacturing technically happened offshore. Software is a huge industry, but it is still heavily dependent on globalization.
- Aloisius 2y ago
  > Hell, when Microsoft was still shipping software on CDs you may have noticed a little fine print mentioning the Caribbean island on which the disc was technically manufactured. I don't recall this at all. What software was it? Going through my box of ancient software, they all either say made in the US either on the CD/DVD or on the packaging, except for a copy of Office 97 and Office 2007 which says made in Puerto Rico (which is the US). They certainly had CDs pressed in other countries for foreign markets. I imagine some foreign made laptops might have come with CD/DVDs pressed in those countries.
  - _heimdall 2y ago
    Office was the example I had in mind. The discs sold in the US were printed outside the US, they weren't only for foreign markets. I don't recall if Windows discs were printed outside the US, though I do believe binaries were compiled and signed outside the US.
    - Aloisius 2y ago
      Are you certain the island in the Caribbean you were thinking of wasn't Puerto Rico? I can't imagine what other island you'd make them on. All six versions of Office I have seemed to be made in the US. They're all retail copies however.
      - _heimdall 2y ago
        Puerto Rico sounds right, and if you still have a physical office disc with that on it that totally makes sense.

JKCalhoun 2y ago

> Tariffs may work towards an isolationist goal of producing and consuming our own goods. At this point I'm not even sure that is true. I think instead we'll just see the "cost of doing business" passed along to us consumers.

_heimdall 2y ago
Oh I think that must be the case. We've spent decades profiting by externalizing many of the costs of our consumption onto other parts of the world. Isolationism means we now how to deal with those costs or change our consumption.