Leopards Ate My Face

Orrr... ya missed the "another one of our guys" part

Man, I wonder how basic reading comprehension played a role in the last election.

Read again - it was two different people he was talking about. It's implied that they have different job positions so their hours were impacted differently.

People will tell you subsidies and positive reinforcement but honestly that is just more government spending to make a few rich. The answer is, there isn't an alternative. All options aren't great.

Manufacturing working conditions are horrible. As a country develops workers rights, unions, safety regulations, etc, it becomes almost impossible to compete on a global scale for manufacturing. Naturally the manufacturers in countries where those things don't exist do very well.

In certain countries, the labor is just a few steps off of slave labor, which we all know is highly profitable and highly unethical. In other countries their dollar is so weak that net exports are the obvious choice for profitable businesses. Manufacturing thrives in these conditions and attracts a great deal of foreign investment - because hey, if the shipping costs are outweighed by the operational savings - it's a sound business plan!!

Tariffs upset that equilibrium and guess who pays American tariffs? AMERICAN COMPANIES. The government gets a benefit, US becomes less likely of an export destination for countries to trade with, the dollar gets messed with in funky ways, and there is some amount of global loss of productivity due to this forced shift.

Basically, I view tariffs as a tax on the benefits of cheap overseas labor.

can anyone tell me what the alternative plan was to bring manufacturing back to the states?

what’s the alternative?

A better plan would have involved local subsidies and tax rebates for various industries that have the ability to be cheaper than existing outsourced infrastructure if they were to be developed with a large enough economy of scale, to incentivize them to engage in local production.

And for industries in which we wouldn't experience lower prices even with larger local economies of scale, such as those involved in mining mineral deposits we simply don't have enough of here in the states, we just... wouldn't do anything to tariff anybody or provide incentives if it wouldn't be something we were capable of benefiting from via local production?

And wasn’t that always going to make things more expensive?

These other methods would make things more expensive too, (albeit much less so) but they would directly incentivize local production, and crucially, only cost money when production was actually made locally. Nobody would get a tax rebate or subsidy if nobody was actually starting local production. With tariffs, however, everyone begins paying a higher cost, regardless of if local manufacturing is even happening, let alone if it's cost effective or possible in the first place.

Tariffs are just an inefficient way of incentivizing local production compared to other options, because they primarily exist to punish other countries and their economies, rather than uplift our own. They can be used to incentivize local production, but if not properly linked with subsidies, rebates, and job programs, they aren't terribly effective at doing that, and they will almost always lead to higher prices on an ongoing basis.

Bring on the downvotes but the correct answer is don't. Free trade causes jobs in each country to align with recardiant advantage in those countries. We have the jobs we want now. Unless we are in the middle of a depression we don't want government to "provide more jobs". We don't need more jobs. We want better jobs. The whole reason why manufacturing has slowed down in the US is that the global market for manufacturing doesn't pay as well per man hour as other opportunities we already have.

Tariffs disrupt existing jobs to bring back old jobs. Old jobs we shouldn't want as much as the jobs we have now.

If you want to work a job that someone else is doing right now you should probably expect to make close to what they are making while doing it. Actually less because you are increasing supply. Do we want Americans to make Chinese wages? Now some manufacturing in the US doesn't pay Chinese wages because its work only we can do, hence why it is here, and pays American wages. But if you want to "take back manufacturing" then you are talking specifically about manufacturing they have already demonstrated they can do. So any of that manufacturing will pay at most a Chinese wage. Why the hell would you want those jobs?

Where did you get the idea that tariffs are supposed to increase domestic production in any way?

I can tell you! It's just not a quick, easy, single bill that we can pass. It takes a fundamental change in the way Americans think, it's gonna take at least 2 generations to make this move.

Here's the plan: we're gonna promote cooperation. We're gonna get people to notice the systematic problems in the way they are treated by their authorities. We need to aggressively be better than our enemies, both in practice and knowledge.

Here's the method: (Essay ahead).

We need to disrupt almost every single system that currently exists. They're basically all fucked. Start with the ones that get the most people motivated - their basic needs first, entertainment second, their wellbeing third. That feels wrong and it is, we need 2 generations to fix this because we've been beat down by this system so bad the priorities aren't even correct anymore. I've been using this tagline recently "People in homes, food in bellies, minds entertained and health maintained."

You as an individual can and, if you want to have an impact of saving literally the world and not just America, probably should start doing your part for this plan. Give away what you can, but never what you need. And be careful, because you might need that later. Never let that get in the way, though, of giving what you can. Bring your neighbors grocery money when you have a bit of extra cash, and offer to start a food co-op to make sure they never go hungry. It sucks, because I know damn well I wanna go spend that extra 20 bucks to treat myself and you probably do too. But if you go give it away instead, it'll come back to you. Not immediately, and not always symmetrically. But it will come back to benefit you in some way. We need to shift the focus towards the community instead of the individual. I have plans for the other steps, if you'd like I can go into them. But the food co-ops are the best first step IMO

This isn't even even economics 101, this is just what trade is. You have something I need and I have something you need. If we both have extra and we trade, we both win.

So, how about you produce everything you need without anybody's help, subsistence living. Drop your phone drop, your clothes. Go out into the woods, pick your own food and find your own clean water.

Because that is exactly the position Donald Trump has put our whole country in in relation to the rest of the planet.

So, if you don't want to get along with society, if you want to do everything on your own, more power to you. But don't make claims that other folks are being disingenuous because you didn't bother to understand what trade is.

Assuming the theory that tariffs pushes local manufacturing is true: We could produce our own stuff, but it takes time between the institution of the tariff and when a factory starts producing , so there's still going to be a lot of expensive stuff in the mean time.

More expensive steel (for example) means lots of things like cars get more expensive, which means fewer people can afford them...which means fewer cars to produce...which means less need for related industries (textiles, plastics, rubber, etc.), which (in general) means fewer employees needed to build those cars and supply those related industries....which means more people with less money....which means those people are going to buy fewer things, which means less money for all of the other businesses... and so on. It just spreads. Everything depends on everything else.

You can't just build a factory and start producing say, steel, overnight. And what happens if the tariff is dropped right after you finish your factory? You're going to get hosed, so it's a huge risk - especially with someone as inconsistent as Trump.

Because we don't have every resource in the world contained within our small slice of a single continent? Not to mention, it isn't 19-dickety2, so Europe and the rest of the world aren't brain-draining into the US as much as they once were, thanks to local-stability and our newfound US-instability. And, speaking of which, thanks to the morons grabbing the wheel and directing us into a brick wall, well...that brain-drain we benefitted from since the Nazis...yeah, the opposite is happening now. Turns out smart people don't want to live under fascism...weird, I know. Why can't they just hate the same people I hate?!?!?