MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Wed Aug 17, 2022 8:29 pm
Frankly, tariffs are about the stupidest way to try to incentivize businesses to move operations to the US...they work miserably and create all sorts of unintended outcomes in response. Just dumb...and most of us understood that was the case when Trump was blustering away and the rubes were buying his con.
"Stupidest"? Oh, I am sure there are plenty of far more stupid ways to go about generating more local production. Generally speaking every econ class will tell you that tariffs destroy value - but don't get me started on economists... the smartest thing I have heard an economist say is "in the long run, we're all dead" - which of course is an indictment of their own field of study....
Yes, lots of potential unintended consequences. But just because YOU don't like the consequences doesn't mean they are dumb. The argument that tariffs are interfering in free capitalism is specious. We already interfere in free capitalism everyday - it is just that 200 years of imperialism based economic theory has favored capital over labor - it is so ingrained in our economic system we don't even recognize the (as afan would point out)
socialism embedded in our support for the export of labor to the cheapest source and the import of commodities from the cheapest source. Of course "cheap" is all based on the amount of money spent on them - not the full cost. When the labor pool of a developing country lives in conditions that would make slave-holders of 200 years ago blush, while the heads of state live like kings ... what is the true cost of that labor? When a developing country allows environmental destruction to be left in the wake of silica mining for solar panels, again while the heads of state buy homes in Monaco and US developers get rich - what is the true cost of that silica?
So yes, tariffs shift the balance of influence away from consumption and toward production. It means all sorts of things become more expensive. But does it mean our citizens' quality of life gets better or worse? We have to stop measuring everything in terms of increasing volume of consumption - that is ultimately a losing game for humanity.
Another point worth considering is how big a deterrent tariffs really will pose to foreign producers selling their goods into the US. The US is, and will be for some time, the biggest consumer market in the world - other countries WILL get their goods into our market, they just won't be able to take advantage of different regulatory costs when doing so. I, for one, would be glad to see that. Of course some countries will retaliate. The question is which ones, will they retaliate across product lines, and what impact will that have on US producers' ability to access foreign markets. Complex systems are complex!
Of course Trump was blustering, that is all he does. But sometimes he will bluster about smart things he heard someone else say. I am not sure his tariff bluster was smart or stupid. I don't think anybody could know because there was not enough meat on the bones to actually evaluate it. But on that topic MD - I gotta tell you the comment about "Just dumb...and most of us understood that was the case" comes across as more than a little arrogant. My response is - most of "you" understood exactly what CNN or Fox and
all the right and virtuous people in polite society told you to understand. There was never enough detail provided to even begin to understand a) what Trump was actually proposing be done or b) how it would be implemented. Because the clown that Trump is, he had no idea himself
I am not saying Trump's "tariffs" would have accomplished anything. I never even talked about Trump in my comments, I talked about tariffs in general. This tendency for everyone to want to bring everything back to Trump is counterproductive. So many people are letting him live rent-free in their heads and he feeds of that. I am not a Trump fan - but I am a realist. From the time he announced his candidacy it was clear that he was tapping into the polarization that is going on across the world as we fall back to what amounts to an imperialist global economy - only this time under the guise of a global corporatist economy. Just like the kings, tsars and queens of old had more in common with each other than with their subjects - the self-anointed elite share more values across national boundaries than they do with their own countrymen and women. More and more, the
regular Joe's believe that those that are supposed to be serving them are actually working against them. Responsible people can recognize that and change how they are approaching leadership, or scumbags like Trump will do it instead. So far, I am not feeling good about how that is going to play out.