6 ms·

The problem is that factories take years to build, many forms of agriculture take years to yield results too. So when the tariffs can change every day and you

The problem is that factories take years to build, many forms of agriculture take years to yield results too. So when the tariffs can change every day and you don't know if they'll be around in 5 years, do you commit millions to building something that doesn't pay off until 5 years from now?

toomuchtodo 1y ago
You just stop imports or raise prices until regime change. Until then, economic uncertainty and pain.
- xnx 1y ago
  > You just stop imports or raise prices until regime change Not a lot of domestic coffee production. I'm pretty sure there would be riots in the streets if coffee was $65/lb.
  - pc86 1y ago
    If it gets people to stop buying 1200 calorie starbucks drinks with 70g of sugar in them it will be worth it /s
    - nancyminusone 1y ago
      Nah, it'll just change to 100% sugar and 120000 calories.
  - chasd00 1y ago
    > riots in the streets if coffee was $65/lb. Well at least it would be a slow moving riot with lots of yawning.
    - ceejayoz 1y ago
      Have you seen one of us when someone's between us and coffee? We're sleepy if we need coffee. We're angry when we can't have coffee.
  - toomuchtodo 1y ago
    If people are unhappy with the outcome of harmful, irrational policy, they should feel empowered to riot. The government and representation is supposed to work for the people, after all. Accountability is important in governing systems.
    - xnx 1y ago
      I agree. I wondering what it would take to get through to the average person that voted for this administration.
      - fuzzfactor 1y ago
        If it's only inconveniences like $65 coffee that sets touchy people off enough to storm the Capitol or something, that's definitely not a riot. It's been fully proven by the party in power to be a legitimate demontstration of opinion. What would it take anyway . . . ?
        h2zizzle 1y ago
        Empathy. If well-off people were to fully understand the situation the rest of us find ourselves in, and the increasing likelihood that it will eventually become a problem for them, too, they'd put all of their HOA-busybody/PTA-pearl-clutcher/campaign donor might behind solving the issue. They are currently in "ignore it, it doesn't effect me, it's not my problem" mode, heavy.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- LiquidSky 1y ago
  This isn't going to go away with a new administration. Global trust in the US is broken. Even this idea that things will swing wildly back when an administration changes is part of the problem. There's no going back from this, the US has permanently lost its position in the global order. Even our allies are looking elsewhere now.
  - toomuchtodo 1y ago
    I agree, which is good, because the US cannot be trusted to vote for adults (based on observations and the evidence). But punitive tariffs can go away under different governance, so some relief, but to your point, we're not going back to how things were because of the self inflicted trade harm.
A_D_E_P_T 1y ago
> The problem is that factories take years to build Nobody's even building them right now. CAPEX and industrial investment have declined in recent months. (!!) They may even drop further. So it seems that if the aim is to revitalize America's industrial base, the present strategy isn't working, but is having an opposite effect.
- threeseed 1y ago
  You need an educated, skilled and plentiful workforce for global manufacturing. US has taken concrete steps in the last 100 days to reduce all three.
  - Moto7451 1y ago
    The strategy of the US has been Hegemony. Friendly foreign partners were intended to take over industries we did not want in our own backyards for political, diplomatic, economic, or environmental reasons. For a stint in college I was an International Relations major and this was 100 series education. At a basic level this is discussed as the “Pollution Haven Hypothesis.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollution_haven_hypothesis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollution_haven_hypothesis A political/diplomatic example is rebuilding the Japanese Steel industry after WWII so they could regain self sufficiency. Until we decide to shoot ourselves in the foot hard enough we’ve had a consistent trading partner in high quality steel ever since. The current “strategy” is painful because it has the weight of the past 60-70 years working against it.
    - SpicyLemonZest 1y ago
      I dunno. This reads to me like an attempt to retroactively justify the effects of US policies that were aimed at a different purpose. I don't think I've ever seen an American politician say that they'd prefer for industry X or Y to be located in a different country.
      - vel0city 1y ago
        Just going to ignore the Marshall Plan and Reverse Course policies then I guess? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Course https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Course This isn't some retroactive attempt to justify something. This was the actual policy at the time.
fabian2k 1y ago
The factories would be more expensive because the materials and machines are also affected by tariffs. And you obviously can't rely on the tariffs to remain that way, Trump is far too flaky, hopefully not in power forever and the tariffs are just too damn stupid to remain. The harm they cause will be quite obvious soon.
- akudha 1y ago
  What is the best case scenario here? Even if the tariff war ends next month, wouldn't production/shipping etc take weeks/months to recover? How are small businesses with limited cash flow expected to survive in the interim? The most scary thing are medicines, medical equipment etc. Healthcare is going to become even more expensive, no? Above everything else, why would other countries/allies/trading-partners trust the U.S govt again? I just can't comprehend how this is good for anyone, other than those with spare cash to buy up distressed assets
  - SpicyLemonZest 1y ago
    The best case scenario is that governments make agreements to accept more US exports, the trade war ends, and in a couple years conventional wisdom remembers this entire episode as a cautionary tale about crazy policies countries sometimes pursue when their trade balance gets too out of whack. Is that the most likely resolution? No, I don’t think so, I’m still holding most of my money out of the stock market. But doing lots of business with countries whose current government isn’t trustworthy isn’t an unheard of scenario.
  - aftbit 1y ago
    >Other than those with spare cash to buy up distressed assets That might be the whole point. Look at Trump's "now is a great time to buy" post. It's also good for America's enemies. Maybe the goal is just a weakened America overall.
pydry 1y ago
And industrial ecosystems like the one in Shenzhen take decades. There is simply no way to speedrun that kind of development.
- ahoka 1y ago
  Shenzhen WAS the speedrun.
  - rchaud 1y ago
    Exactly, I can't see how something like that could develop faster in peacetime.
_heimdall 1y ago
factories also require relative stability to justify the upfront investment. If a person is so inclined, they would be raising money today to build a US factory that may open after Trump is out of office. Personally I'd want one hell of an insurance policy to cover the risk of all that money being wasted when I finally open my doors and have to compete with overseas manufacturing that may no longer be burdened by these tariffs.
_1tem 1y ago
> do you commit millions to building something that doesn't pay off until 5 years from now? This is exactly the kind of short-termism that got us to where we are now. Why is it so hard to think on a 5-10 year timeline? This is country-level ADHD. Anything worth building requires long term investments. People in the past used to spend their life building cathedrals that they knew would never be finished in their lifetime, and now you're questioning whether it's worth investing in something that has an expected ROI in 5 years!
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- hypeatei 1y ago
  This isn't long term thinking industrial policy. Flip flopping and using ChatGPT to steer tariff policy isn't looking ahead. Pure delusion. Trump has control of all branches yet isn't passing any legislation. All he's doing is introducing uncertainty.
- zorked 1y ago
  You are free to spend billions betting in an unstable government then. Show them how it's done! Oh, you meant other people's money.
- nemomarx 1y ago
  But what if 2 years in all the tariffs are cancelled and you go bankrupt? if you want people to think long term you need long term stable policies that won't change the next time someone else sits in the oval office or Congress changes hands. you need to commit to a strategy.
  - _1tem 1y ago
    [flagged]
KingOfCoders 1y ago
Fun fact: The GDR (East Germany) had a massive coffee problem because of dollars (scarce). So they heavily invested in Vietnam for coffee production. It took 10 years for the coffee to be produced, and the GDR collapsed before. After German reunification Vietnam became one of the biggest coffee producers.
- asah 1y ago
  source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_German_coffee_crisis#Influence_on_coffee_production_in_Vietnam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_German_coffee_crisis#Infl...
rtkwe 1y ago
Even if they did get built they only make economic sense if there's still the tariffs or something drastically changes the cost formula (eg: automation that's simultaneously very adaptable to new products like a hoard of people) but more realistically the tariffs have to remain in place forever to keep the factories.
api 1y ago
Nobody is going to invest in a factory that's only profitable under this tariff regime because it's all based on Trump, who notoriously changes his mind or may die or get overridden after the midterms. What if Trump wakes up tomorrow and says "you know what? I had a man to man with Xi Xinpeng and now the trade war is off!" I am not against repatriating manufacturing, but it's something that needs to be done with thought and strategy. This trade war is worse than Biden's Afghanistan withdrawal.
- Terr_ 1y ago
  > This trade war is worse than Biden's Afghanistan withdrawal. "Biden's"? That's comparing an 100%-Trump fiasco with an 80%-Trump fiasco. If we're gonna blame Biden for not breaking the US/Taliban ceasefire agreement and drawing things out... Then we need to talk about how it was Trump who made the agreement abandoning the Afghan government, Trump who negotiated that aggressive May 2021 deadline to land at the beginning of the next term [0], and Trump who had to be stopped by his staff from triggering a far-worse instant "fuck y'all, we bail" just days after he lost the election in Nov 2020. [1] _____ [0] https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/568154-trumps-deal-with-the-taliban-set-the-stage-for-the-afghan-collapse/ https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/568154-trumps-... [1] https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2022/10/13/trump-ordered-rapid-withdrawal-from-afghanistan-after-election-loss/ https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2022/10...
- blipvert 1y ago
  Technically Trump’s Afghanistan withdrawal … Biden just didn’t repeal it.
Lendal 1y ago
Yes. And even if we could wave a magical wand and materialize a whole new city (or region) with thousands of new factories and also a workforce complete with training, and housing for them, and new universities to continue the training for them and their children, and new power plants to supply the power and water needs of this new region as well as a transportation infrastructure to support all this new economic activity. New airports, new rail networks, and new shipping ports. Even if all that could happen instantaneously, the result of all these new Made-in-USA goods would still be astronomically higher prices for all Americans. The US is one of the most expensive places to live in the world, and all these factories have to pay those high prices both for their construction and for their ongoing operations. (I'm assuming here the magical wand only speeds time. It doesn't produce investment capital out of thin air.) So protective tariffs would need to continue on indefinitely so all these people could keep their very expensive jobs and all Americans would be paying the bill for it, forever.
- giantg2 1y ago
  I saw a study years ago that compared US made vs foreign made products and found that most imports had US made alternatives that were not substantially more expensive. Walmart made a big push to increase their percentage of US sourced products a few years ago. With the increase in automation, the labor costs aren't as much of a differentiator. I'm not sure this small price difference will continue since I assume a reduction in imports might result in greater demand domestically and those factories might not be able to easily scale to absorb the shift.
  - spwa4 1y ago
    link?
  - heneryville 1y ago
    Survivorship bias. The only US made goods left are those that can compete with foreign production. You cannot use those remaining as evidence that all goods could be US made without significant price increases.
  - no_wizard 1y ago
wslh 1y ago
Welcome to Argentina, a country where we live on a roller coaster of shifting policies, economic turmoil, and ongoing corruption. While it's clear that not all countries are alike, it's interesting to observe what emerges from this kind of system.
- ty6853 1y ago
  Argentina's people seem to have dealt with this through mass tax fraud, hiding money in crypto/cash/real assets, insubordination to law, and electing a self proclaimed anarcho-capitalist. Somehow they've managed to thrive in a lot of ways, and not only that they can deal with an arbitrarily incompetent government through self-resilience. Americans will learn too.
  - wslh 1y ago
    > Argentina's people seem to have dealt with this through mass tax fraud, hiding money in crypto/cash/real assets, insubordination to law, and electing a self proclaimed anarcho-capitalist. It is not black or white when there is not real [power of] law enforcement.
mike-cardwell 1y ago
Precisely. Seems fairly likely the tariffs will be gone 5 years from now one way or another. Who in their right mind would build a business based on those tariffs still existing into the future.
user9999999999 1y ago
funny you assume rational thought has a hand in this

toomuchtodo 1y ago

You just stop imports or raise prices until regime change. Until then, economic uncertainty and pain.

xnx 1y ago
> You just stop imports or raise prices until regime change Not a lot of domestic coffee production. I'm pretty sure there would be riots in the streets if coffee was $65/lb.
- pc86 1y ago
  If it gets people to stop buying 1200 calorie starbucks drinks with 70g of sugar in them it will be worth it /s
  - nancyminusone 1y ago
    Nah, it'll just change to 100% sugar and 120000 calories.
- chasd00 1y ago
  > riots in the streets if coffee was $65/lb. Well at least it would be a slow moving riot with lots of yawning.
  - ceejayoz 1y ago
    Have you seen one of us when someone's between us and coffee? We're sleepy if we need coffee. We're angry when we can't have coffee.
- toomuchtodo 1y ago
  If people are unhappy with the outcome of harmful, irrational policy, they should feel empowered to riot. The government and representation is supposed to work for the people, after all. Accountability is important in governing systems.
  - xnx 1y ago
    I agree. I wondering what it would take to get through to the average person that voted for this administration.
    - fuzzfactor 1y ago
      If it's only inconveniences like $65 coffee that sets touchy people off enough to storm the Capitol or something, that's definitely not a riot. It's been fully proven by the party in power to be a legitimate demontstration of opinion. What would it take anyway . . . ?
      - h2zizzle 1y ago
        Empathy. If well-off people were to fully understand the situation the rest of us find ourselves in, and the increasing likelihood that it will eventually become a problem for them, too, they'd put all of their HOA-busybody/PTA-pearl-clutcher/campaign donor might behind solving the issue. They are currently in "ignore it, it doesn't effect me, it's not my problem" mode, heavy.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
LiquidSky 1y ago
This isn't going to go away with a new administration. Global trust in the US is broken. Even this idea that things will swing wildly back when an administration changes is part of the problem. There's no going back from this, the US has permanently lost its position in the global order. Even our allies are looking elsewhere now.
- toomuchtodo 1y ago
  I agree, which is good, because the US cannot be trusted to vote for adults (based on observations and the evidence). But punitive tariffs can go away under different governance, so some relief, but to your point, we're not going back to how things were because of the self inflicted trade harm.

A_D_E_P_T 1y ago

> The problem is that factories take years to build Nobody's even building them right now. CAPEX and industrial investment have declined in recent months. (!!) They may even drop further. So it seems that if the aim is to revitalize America's industrial base, the present strategy isn't working, but is having an opposite effect.

threeseed 1y ago
You need an educated, skilled and plentiful workforce for global manufacturing. US has taken concrete steps in the last 100 days to reduce all three.
- Moto7451 1y ago
  The strategy of the US has been Hegemony. Friendly foreign partners were intended to take over industries we did not want in our own backyards for political, diplomatic, economic, or environmental reasons. For a stint in college I was an International Relations major and this was 100 series education. At a basic level this is discussed as the “Pollution Haven Hypothesis.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollution_haven_hypothesis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollution_haven_hypothesis A political/diplomatic example is rebuilding the Japanese Steel industry after WWII so they could regain self sufficiency. Until we decide to shoot ourselves in the foot hard enough we’ve had a consistent trading partner in high quality steel ever since. The current “strategy” is painful because it has the weight of the past 60-70 years working against it.
  - SpicyLemonZest 1y ago
    I dunno. This reads to me like an attempt to retroactively justify the effects of US policies that were aimed at a different purpose. I don't think I've ever seen an American politician say that they'd prefer for industry X or Y to be located in a different country.
    - vel0city 1y ago
      Just going to ignore the Marshall Plan and Reverse Course policies then I guess? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Course https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Course This isn't some retroactive attempt to justify something. This was the actual policy at the time.

fabian2k 1y ago

The factories would be more expensive because the materials and machines are also affected by tariffs. And you obviously can't rely on the tariffs to remain that way, Trump is far too flaky, hopefully not in power forever and the tariffs are just too damn stupid to remain. The harm they cause will be quite obvious soon.

akudha 1y ago
What is the best case scenario here? Even if the tariff war ends next month, wouldn't production/shipping etc take weeks/months to recover? How are small businesses with limited cash flow expected to survive in the interim? The most scary thing are medicines, medical equipment etc. Healthcare is going to become even more expensive, no? Above everything else, why would other countries/allies/trading-partners trust the U.S govt again? I just can't comprehend how this is good for anyone, other than those with spare cash to buy up distressed assets
- SpicyLemonZest 1y ago
  The best case scenario is that governments make agreements to accept more US exports, the trade war ends, and in a couple years conventional wisdom remembers this entire episode as a cautionary tale about crazy policies countries sometimes pursue when their trade balance gets too out of whack. Is that the most likely resolution? No, I don’t think so, I’m still holding most of my money out of the stock market. But doing lots of business with countries whose current government isn’t trustworthy isn’t an unheard of scenario.
- aftbit 1y ago
  >Other than those with spare cash to buy up distressed assets That might be the whole point. Look at Trump's "now is a great time to buy" post. It's also good for America's enemies. Maybe the goal is just a weakened America overall.

pydry 1y ago

And industrial ecosystems like the one in Shenzhen take decades. There is simply no way to speedrun that kind of development.

ahoka 1y ago
Shenzhen WAS the speedrun.
- rchaud 1y ago
  Exactly, I can't see how something like that could develop faster in peacetime.

_heimdall 1y ago

factories also require relative stability to justify the upfront investment. If a person is so inclined, they would be raising money today to build a US factory that may open after Trump is out of office. Personally I'd want one hell of an insurance policy to cover the risk of all that money being wasted when I finally open my doors and have to compete with overseas manufacturing that may no longer be burdened by these tariffs.

_1tem 1y ago

> do you commit millions to building something that doesn't pay off until 5 years from now? This is exactly the kind of short-termism that got us to where we are now. Why is it so hard to think on a 5-10 year timeline? This is country-level ADHD. Anything worth building requires long term investments. People in the past used to spend their life building cathedrals that they knew would never be finished in their lifetime, and now you're questioning whether it's worth investing in something that has an expected ROI in 5 years!

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
hypeatei 1y ago
This isn't long term thinking industrial policy. Flip flopping and using ChatGPT to steer tariff policy isn't looking ahead. Pure delusion. Trump has control of all branches yet isn't passing any legislation. All he's doing is introducing uncertainty.
zorked 1y ago
You are free to spend billions betting in an unstable government then. Show them how it's done! Oh, you meant other people's money.
nemomarx 1y ago
But what if 2 years in all the tariffs are cancelled and you go bankrupt? if you want people to think long term you need long term stable policies that won't change the next time someone else sits in the oval office or Congress changes hands. you need to commit to a strategy.
- _1tem 1y ago
  [flagged]

KingOfCoders 1y ago

Fun fact: The GDR (East Germany) had a massive coffee problem because of dollars (scarce). So they heavily invested in Vietnam for coffee production. It took 10 years for the coffee to be produced, and the GDR collapsed before. After German reunification Vietnam became one of the biggest coffee producers.

asah 1y ago
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_German_coffee_crisis#Influence_on_coffee_production_in_Vietnam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_German_coffee_crisis#Infl...

rtkwe 1y ago

Even if they did get built they only make economic sense if there's still the tariffs or something drastically changes the cost formula (eg: automation that's simultaneously very adaptable to new products like a hoard of people) but more realistically the tariffs have to remain in place forever to keep the factories.

api 1y ago

Nobody is going to invest in a factory that's only profitable under this tariff regime because it's all based on Trump, who notoriously changes his mind or may die or get overridden after the midterms. What if Trump wakes up tomorrow and says "you know what? I had a man to man with Xi Xinpeng and now the trade war is off!" I am not against repatriating manufacturing, but it's something that needs to be done with thought and strategy. This trade war is worse than Biden's Afghanistan withdrawal.

Terr_ 1y ago
> This trade war is worse than Biden's Afghanistan withdrawal. "Biden's"? That's comparing an 100%-Trump fiasco with an 80%-Trump fiasco. If we're gonna blame Biden for not breaking the US/Taliban ceasefire agreement and drawing things out... Then we need to talk about how it was Trump who made the agreement abandoning the Afghan government, Trump who negotiated that aggressive May 2021 deadline to land at the beginning of the next term [0], and Trump who had to be stopped by his staff from triggering a far-worse instant "fuck y'all, we bail" just days after he lost the election in Nov 2020. [1] _____ [0] https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/568154-trumps-deal-with-the-taliban-set-the-stage-for-the-afghan-collapse/ https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/568154-trumps-... [1] https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2022/10/13/trump-ordered-rapid-withdrawal-from-afghanistan-after-election-loss/ https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2022/10...
blipvert 1y ago
Technically Trump’s Afghanistan withdrawal … Biden just didn’t repeal it.

Lendal 1y ago

Yes. And even if we could wave a magical wand and materialize a whole new city (or region) with thousands of new factories and also a workforce complete with training, and housing for them, and new universities to continue the training for them and their children, and new power plants to supply the power and water needs of this new region as well as a transportation infrastructure to support all this new economic activity. New airports, new rail networks, and new shipping ports. Even if all that could happen instantaneously, the result of all these new Made-in-USA goods would still be astronomically higher prices for all Americans. The US is one of the most expensive places to live in the world, and all these factories have to pay those high prices both for their construction and for their ongoing operations. (I'm assuming here the magical wand only speeds time. It doesn't produce investment capital out of thin air.) So protective tariffs would need to continue on indefinitely so all these people could keep their very expensive jobs and all Americans would be paying the bill for it, forever.

giantg2 1y ago
I saw a study years ago that compared US made vs foreign made products and found that most imports had US made alternatives that were not substantially more expensive. Walmart made a big push to increase their percentage of US sourced products a few years ago. With the increase in automation, the labor costs aren't as much of a differentiator. I'm not sure this small price difference will continue since I assume a reduction in imports might result in greater demand domestically and those factories might not be able to easily scale to absorb the shift.
- spwa4 1y ago
  link?
- heneryville 1y ago
  Survivorship bias. The only US made goods left are those that can compete with foreign production. You cannot use those remaining as evidence that all goods could be US made without significant price increases.
- no_wizard 1y ago

wslh 1y ago

Welcome to Argentina, a country where we live on a roller coaster of shifting policies, economic turmoil, and ongoing corruption. While it's clear that not all countries are alike, it's interesting to observe what emerges from this kind of system.

ty6853 1y ago
Argentina's people seem to have dealt with this through mass tax fraud, hiding money in crypto/cash/real assets, insubordination to law, and electing a self proclaimed anarcho-capitalist. Somehow they've managed to thrive in a lot of ways, and not only that they can deal with an arbitrarily incompetent government through self-resilience. Americans will learn too.
- wslh 1y ago
  > Argentina's people seem to have dealt with this through mass tax fraud, hiding money in crypto/cash/real assets, insubordination to law, and electing a self proclaimed anarcho-capitalist. It is not black or white when there is not real [power of] law enforcement.

mike-cardwell 1y ago

Precisely. Seems fairly likely the tariffs will be gone 5 years from now one way or another. Who in their right mind would build a business based on those tariffs still existing into the future.

user9999999999 1y ago

funny you assume rational thought has a hand in this