news

A lot of people talk about "oh, well, tariffs are a tool that could bring back USA based manufacturing"

...but at every step of the way there have been tariffs on manufacturing inputs, which has the complete opposite effect.

I just feel like that's being lost in the noise, that the actual obvious outcomes of these tariffs if implemented long-term are 180 degrees from what the admin is claiming they are for.

I actually work at one of these USA based manufacturers, I'll be out on the floor doing some build support later today. We are basically proceeding as though the tariffs are not going to go into effect, because the alternative is that we just have to shut down operations and furlough everyone for awhile. The business will simply cease to function if everything we source from China costs twice as much. We went through this same shit during Trump 1's steel tariffs, and it lead to a permanent shrinkage of the business (I was laid off back in 2018 as a result of that, and I've actually just recently come back to work at the same company).

You need to make the components to the US too dumbass otherwise you're just assembling the product in the United States, not actually making it.

But making those components in the US is not profitable, because there are no companies making things in the US that need those components, certainly not on the scale that needs factories for it.

What you have is a classic chicken or the egg situation. It's not profitable to make the components in the US without the large scale computer end-products being made and it's also not profitable to build the end-products in the US without the components being manufactured there already.

I touched on this when Germany's industries disappeared during the european energy crisis caused by Nordstream and Ukraine. The industries physically can't come back on market forces alone. They weren't formed with market forces alone in the first place and they had different conditions that led to their formation at the time anyway.

Frankly if I were a capitalist ghoul the only way that makes sense to me to get any of this to happen in a reasonable timescale would be to start national companies for it, then to privatise them later.

as tim apple himself points out, not just the means of production is in china now, the knowledge of production is there as well. if they had to pay the same labor costs for chinese workers they'd still make it there supposedly.

I'm a serious government

Give me money

yes

This is outdated. The dumbass administration already walked back the exemptions.

The US is most definitely not assembling/making laptops and never will, the kayfabe or actual fucking belief these people have is amazing and horrifying all at once. Capitalist death spiral into openly deranged fascism is astounding.

You forgot the secret ingredient of pretending

This is incorrect.

If you make the laptop in the US and try and sell the laptop to another country you get the other countries tariff.

I think most of the US side tariffs are currently "turned off" right now as Trump and his friends just completed their insider trading.

America had it's chance in 2016, and then again in 2024. They decided by majority vote that this was the way they wanted to go. Not electing thus fuckhead in a legitimate and entirely democratic election, twice, would have been the easiest thing in the world to accomplish. Bitching about it now is pointless. This is what they wanted, no, this is what they demanded.