To be clear, the current tariff execution is reckless and poorly planned. But I hear a lot of total tariff opposition from the same people who demand we continue to escalate with China over control of Taiwan, up to a potential hot war.
So what’s the plan? Western economies were brought to their knees during just a momentary interruption in shipping during the pandemic. How do you wage a war with a country that does all of your manufacturing? China could defeat most western countries without firing a single shot, just by cutting off their access to Chinese exports.
If you don’t support tariffs to bring back manufacturing jobs domestically, how do you think we could make it through a war with our manufacturing partners? I can’t reconcile the two ideas, and I don’t understand how some of y’all are.
Even if tariffs worked the way Trump wanted and it magically brings all this manufacturing back to the USA, it will still cause extreme inflation in the USA. The reason foreign goods are so cheap? Dirt cheap labor. To manufacture these goods in the USA would mean orders of magnitude higher labor costs and ultimately orders of magnitude higher price of goods to the consumer. Inflation.