Nowhere Girl
Do people still not know how tariffs work? JFC. There's a reason tariffs haven't been used as a major form of trade control since the 19th century -- they don't work.
We're no longer in a world where anybody can just build a factory and start cranking out shit. We live in an interconnected, global society where our supply chains are strung out across the entire planet.
Some things we can't get here. Some things we can't make here. Some things would be prohibitively expensive even if we could.
Nowhere Girl
Seriously, when it comes to the economy, whatever you think you're mad about can actually be blamed on billionaires and corporations siphoning off the wealth.
Because the US is still a manufacturing and agricultural power house! Productivity has been going up for decades. They just don't need as many human workers and the profits don't trickle down to the rest of us.
You're not getting screwed by China.
You're getting screwed by your boss.
Nowhere Girl
As far as companies are concerned, it will always be cheaper to import and pass the cost on to consumers. That's all tariffs do. They raise prices.
Because it would be extremely expensive to build all that infrastructure, resource reclamation, factories, and worker training when it already exists someplace else.
Millions of jobs aren't going to spring into existence because of a tariff, and even if they did, eventually, the cost of those high wages would be paid by you, the consumer.
Nowhere Girl
There's a reason tariffs are considered inherently inflationary.
And yeah, there are definitely problems with the global economy, mostly that America and other nations exploit other countries in exchange for lower prices.
But that's not usually what tariff people are worried about.
Nowhere Girl
Tariffs are a relic of 19th century industry when the big manufacturing inputs were things like cotton or iron and not rare earth minerals, when any warm body could run a press on the assembly line instead of having to do nanometer fabrication in a clean room.
As someone else pointed out, you can't even make a pair of blue jeans without getting components from other countries. We've long since outsourced all that work because it was cheaper. And the US economy hasn't suffered for it.
Nowhere Girl
Our entire consumer economy is built around chasing costs as low as possible, which is why many forms of manufacturing have been either automated or off-shored to countries where it's cheaper. There are raw materials we simply can't obtain domestically, or not cheaply, and so there is literally no infrastructure to do so. Not to mention there are foods which simply can't be grown here. All of which has to be imported, and once you start throwing up trade barriers, everything gets more expensive.
Rich Felker
@gwynnion And needing fewer workers is good. But it also needs to mean "owners" don't get to keep profits. Either profits should be eliminated entirely or shared equally among everyone.
🎓 Doc Freemo :jpf: 🇳🇱
> haven't been used as a major form of trade control since the 19th century
Under Biden:
"China is also flooding global markets with artificially low-priced exports. In response to China’s unfair trade practices and to counteract the resulting harms, today, President Biden is directing his Trade Representative to increase tariffs under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 on $18 billion of imports from China to protect American workers and businesses."
We just going to ignore the fact that Biden literally increased the exact same tariffs earlier this year?
Hexnut
@freemo @gwynnion not really “major” yet that’s only 5% of the trade. We should not even be doing those, was very disappointed that Biden didn’t reverse trump’s tariffs.
🎓 Doc Freemo :jpf: 🇳🇱
This is literally just a single tariff increase across a ton of china tariffs int he 301.
The total 301 tariff list on china covers about 600 billion, this particular increase was only 18 billion out of that.
Yea I'd call that pretty major.
https://ustr.gov/issue-areas/enforcement/section-301-investigations/tariff-actions
Hexnut
@freemo @gwynnion ok you got me. Still the proposed tariffs are another order of magnitude. https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/federal/tariffs/
Hexnut
@freemo @gwynnion it’s not quite. I scanned too quick and got confused by time units. It’s more like 3-4x and I am basing it on the revenue generated not the cost of goods. I’m was also talking about all the proposed tariffs not just china’s. So from the article I linked Biden got 36b a year mostly from existing trump tariffs. Trump’s proposal gets 120b a year revenue. Both numbers ignore secondary effects like reduction in trade, jobs, and gdp.
🎓 Doc Freemo :jpf: 🇳🇱
How is Trump's 80 billion tariff "another order of magnitude" compared to the already existing ~600 billion in tariffs already levied against china?
Alexandre Oliva (moving to @lxo@snac.lx.oliva.nom.br)
🎓 Doc Freemo :jpf: 🇳🇱
@lxo In the opposite sense that Hexnut meant it sure.
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