Economics

I know you're just being snarky, but if a company's main purpose is importing parts from China then they suffer as a result of tariffs on China, than it is in fact working as intended.

Millions of Americans in the entire swaths of the country had to watch their homes die as businesses were outsourced. What's left is crime, drugs, and suicide. Like a lot of things, the people on the ground were just told to suck it up and deal with the new normal.

Besides, with China increasingly saber rattling, what happens if they try to take Taiwan, or end up in full scale conflict with India? COVID was a taste of a future that could be upcoming.

It is true that tariffs are paid for by American companies and by American consumers, but it is also true that if it is American companies and American consumers who end up buying the stuff from China and justifying the movement of industries from developed countries to countries like China. People don't talk a whole lot about it, but there were a number of policy changes that were made around the 1970s which were instrumental in hollowing out the rust belt over the past 50 years.

Countries particularly like China can impose their own tariffs, but the reality is that prior to the economic changes in the world wars that made globalization and free trade a good idea, America was its own biggest market. Henry Ford famously increased the pay of his workers and one of the benefits of that was that they could afford the cars that they were building.

Another thing is that tariffs alone don't rebuild industry, but unlike the previous changes they don't hurt. If they're going to stick around in the long term which unfortunately remains to be seen since American democracy happens in four your increments, then companies that were going to invest in China suddenly have a large incentive to invest in America for American markets.

It is true that reducing us trade can affect soft power, but I think that there's a counterpoint that letting things continue as they are will also reduce soft power because racking up debt to buy Chinese goods isn't sustainable in the long term or even the medium term. Moreover, if the United States can't manufacture anything to defend itself, and that conflict with China happens, it look a lot like Europe and it's struggle against Russia.

It could also be the case that this isn't being rolled out in a very nuanced and structured way, and I think that there is legitimacy to that, but as I mentioned before United States politics happens in 4-year increments, and so you have to go hard early.

Oh, sorry, it's Lemmy. "Look at how stupid and bad Cheetos Hitler is!"