Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
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User ID: 1226
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3mo ago
Tariffs are basically affirmative action for American companies to compete with foreign ones
If only. If this were serious industrial policy it might have a glimmer of defensibility. Targeted tariffs combined with policies to enforce export discipline might make sense if you were really into having a manufacturing export-based economy. You're still making Americans poorer for the sake of your manufacturing fetish, but you can at least argue strategic reasons for it.
What we're getting is pretty much the opposite of that. The domestic economy is being categorically fenced off from foreign competition, there will be retaliatory tariffs, and American firms are going to be stuck trying to source everything domestically or paying an exorbitant markup to suppliers. The result is going to be less competitive producers subsisting off a captive market. American companies are not going to have to compete with foreign ones domestically, and they're certainly not going to be competing internationally.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3mo ago
I can't figure out to what extent Americans realize how off-putting their rhetoric is for people on the outside.
You will not go far wrong if you assume the average American voter is only tenuously aware that people in other countries exist. It's a little hyperbolic, but the reality is that Americans just don't think about international affairs that much.
Too drunk on power to care, or actually believe themselves to be victimized
Por que no los do? A major part of Trump's appeal is that he synthesizes a bullying affect with a sense of righteous victimization. Trump tells his supporters America is getting screwed and they eat it up even as Trump gears up to try and mug the rest of the world.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3mo ago
The tax cuts will pay for themselves :V
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3mo ago
Trump has said for years that the military is in shambles and needs to be repaired
He's not entirely wrong. The US military has spent most of the last twenty five years busy with counterinsurgency ops, which has left its conventional warfare capabilities in a rough spot. Though the problem is really specifically the Navy.
I'm not interested in the US federal government using tax money to create an even bigger military stick to shake at the rest of the world
Don't worry, the plan is to cut taxes as well.
American casualty tolerance isn’t near what it was in Vietnam, and even that became too much toward the end.
"Casualty tolerance" (or lack thereof) is overrated. What matters is whether or not the populace believes the war is valid and winnable. What did in the Vietnam War was not that the casualties were unbearable but that the American public increasingly believed they were dying for nothing - that the cause was bad, the war was unwinnable, and the government was lying about it.
The problem with war with Iran is not that America can't bear taking casualties. It's that the constituency for war with Iran is John McCain's ghost. For most of the country any number of casualties is too great because the USG doesn't have the credibility to pick that kind of fight.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3mo ago
Trump made tariffs a cornerstone of his campaign, and he's acting on that, so there is nothing to expose.
It's exposed Trump apologists. After years of his defenders insisting we should take him seriously but not literally, it turns out he's a malicious idiot and we should have taken him literally.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3mo ago
It's easier to undermine a policy when the whole point of the policy is to favor some companies/sectors more than others, vs. just setting-and-forgetting a tariff rate.
This is contrary to the industrial policy rationale. The justification being offered for tariffs is to favor some companies/sectors more than others.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3mo ago
"Yes-chad", I might say to all that. Yes, I want to destroy the degenerate, consumerist, metastasized economy. Yes, I don't want cheap garbage from foreign countries. America needs harsh medicine.
One recent point of hilarity is that while there's been a movement of people on the left taking onboard traditional right-wing critiques of left-wing economic policy, there's also been a surge of right-wingers adopting what are essentially leftist degrowth arguments with a trad gloss.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3mo ago
I'm fairly sure consensus within the discipline is that corporate taxes mostly fall on labor and consumers. They're politically popular because tax incidence is illegible to most voters.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3mo ago
Having a lever is more control than not having it, even if you never decide to pull it.
"Undermined by lobbying efforts" is a fully generally problem for any policy. It can happen just as easily with tariffs.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3mo ago
If you are going to do protectionism, tariffs are better than subsidies.
I disagree. Subsidies give you (the protecting government) more control over whatever it is you're trying to accomplish. If, e.g., you're trying to build/maintain export competitiveness, with tariffs you're hoping domestic producers decide to do that instead of collecting rents from their captive market. With subsidies you can enforce export discipline by withdrawing support from firms who don't do that or rewarding successful firms.
(Both are, of course, susceptible to corruption or throwing good money after bad)
The primary feature of tariffs strikes me as aesthetic - the payer see the transfer as a tax rather than the indirect subsidy it actually is, the beneficiary gets to pretend they're not getting a handout, and fiscal hawks don't have to bear the indignity of seeing it on the wrong side of the government balance sheet.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3mo ago
What if you don't import 100% of your electricity from abroad? What if you have quite a lot of domestic electricity production already? Why does it make sense to try and preempt potential future losses by simply forgoing the gains in the first place? As your other respondent noted, poverty is easy to maintain. That's a meager virtue.
Overall lfpr is in the dumps right now
The population is getting older and more people are going to college.
No idea where to find "prime age" lfpr but some links would be nice
FRED would be good place to start: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3mo ago
This gets to both sides of the tariff problem. If you're going to give domestic producers license to collect rents instead of competing, they're going to do it. And on the flip side, you're not going to maintain global competitiveness by trying to rely on a fenced off domestic market (even a big one like the US) - domestic producers are all too willing to phone it in. You demonstrably can astroturf a competitive export industry, but it relies on pretty much the opposite of trying to bolster domestic markets. You're usually deliberately screwing domestic consumers and domestic workers for the sake of international competitiveness.
(You also have to be realistic about your circumstances. US post-war supremacy in manufacturing exports was in no small part the product of a confluence of events that are not really repeatable)
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3mo ago
The fundamental error is supposing there's some huge reserve of able-bodied but idle people sitting around. Prime Age LFPR is near an all-time high. Most of the people who don't have a job have a good reason for it (e.g. caretaking, education, age, disability) or are looking for one.
Isn't that just... wonderful? Isn't that exactly what Trump's base voted for? Isn't that, quite literally, how you make America great again?
Why is it wonderful? I actually don't think Trump's base voted for a plan to make everyone so poor we have to flog the elderly and disabled back on the assembly line.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3mo ago
Decoupling from electricity leads to antifragility as well.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3mo ago
I find it baffling that Scott Bessent cannot see that this plan cannot mathematically work.
It's entirely probable that Bessent knows these plans make no sense but doesn't find any value in saying that out loud.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3mo ago
American manufacturing is actually really strong
A relevant point to the "why do I never see 'made in USA' labels" is that US manufacturing strengths are not low-end consumer goods like textiles or plasticrap. The US does a lot of high-value manufacturing, but those products are often sold to other businesses.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3mo ago
We have been told repeatedly for years by the experts that making any sort of adjustment, pushing any buttons on the control panel at all, to the global trade system would lead to complete economic collapse
We push the buttons all the time. Joe Biden pushed some buttons; Trump pushed some buttons last time; so did Obama and Bush and Clinton and...
What we generally avoid doing is pushing the Big Red Button.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3mo ago
It is vaguely funny watching political and economic analysts try to make sense of this and talk about this like it's a serious policy and not Trump accidentally outflanking degrowthers from the left.
Unfortunately, the humor is somewhat attenuated by the reality that an insane octogenarian billionaire is trying to wreck my country and make me poorer to satisfy his autarky fetish.
The only saving grace is that Trump is fickle
In principle, Congress could shut this whole thing down, since his authority to do this is statutory and there is pretty blatantly not an emergency.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3mo ago
I enjoyed it, but I will warn a) it is incredibly slow b) basically nothing happens.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3mo ago
Due process only exists if the parties involved sign on to the process
The reason you have due process for this kind of thing is that there are a variety of potential issues, like "actually I do have legal residency" or "I don't have legal residency, but there are legal reasons not to deport me (like I'll be killed)" or "I'm not who they claim I am".
"Bad guys don't deserve due process" is misunderstanding the reason we have due process.
the government should not have to legally bother to deport you, just pack you up and ship you home.
The Trump administration is not simply shipping people back to their country of origin.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3mo ago
The Revolutionary War was a separatist rebellion. It could also have been a revolution within the American colonies, but by and large wasn't - the major social/political developments in the colonies had already occurred and to a significant degree the cause of the rebellion was attempts by the British government to roll them back/redefine the relationship. The post-war social order wasn't identical to pre-independence, but it was pretty similar.
Contra your follow up remark, I would say that the Haitian Revolution was a real revolution, in that it totally upended the Haitian social order, in addition to being a separatist revolt against France.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3mo ago
Hands of the Emperor by Victoria Goddard is about the unofficial prime minister of the world going on vacation with his boss and coworkers while trying to explain his job to his relatives.
The Human Division by John Scalzi is about, essentially, a second rate team of diplomats (well, they're billed as second rate; in the actual story they appear to be pretty good at their job).
Artifact Space/Deep Black by Miles Cameron is about the crew of a Space Indiaman, and while the main character has some personal issues, the crew overall is a pretty well-oiled machine.
One of the great things about setting the bar at "economic apocalypse" is that you can back off to merely raising prices a bit while failing to achieve any your stated goals and still claim victory.
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