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The problem is the tariff boosters don't care. They believe in some unicorns-and-rainbows benefit from tariffs that's never going to happen, and they'll continue to believe in it even as it doesn't happen.
Unfortunately not. People can eat less and put less gas in cars, because prices have gone way up and/or availability has gone way down. This is called "poverty".
I don't think that tariffs are going to result in a magical surge for the US economy, no.
I am happy to accept a net reduction in wealth, even a significant net reduction, as long as we get something in return. A weakened China, a more self-sufficient US, manufacturing jobs for the working class. Something.
If we just get literally nothing in return, not even pain for our enemies, then yeah, that would be a bit silly and that should ideally be avoided. But the PRC online army is calling us bitches and saying that we'll back down because we can't take the pain. So we may have to keep going even if it turns out to be purely self-destructive. Because the one thing you can never do under any circumstances is look like a bitch.
We might get a weakened China, in as much as we'll weaken the entire world. I'm not sure why you want manufacturing jobs for the working class -- what difference does it make if they bust their butt in a shoe factory rather than an Amazon warehouse? But you won't get it. Nor self-sufficiency.
There is one, and it's that one of these can be transformed into an arms factory and the other can not.
That's most likely not why this is being done but it's still conspicuous.
This is one of the worst arguments for tariffs! If we want arms factories, we can just spend 1% of our GDP on arms factories, have some competent individual (I would've picked Elon a year ago but we've seen how that's gone) manage 'procurement' instead of the existing bureaucracies, and we'll have a ton of arms factories. We do not need to make shoes to make missiles.
You can't just tax and spend your way to an independent supply chain for military goods. Small countries have the luxury of doing efficient off the shelf procurement because they don't need to be able to fight China and win. The US can't.
Who's making the electronics in your missile ? Who's making the inputs for those and for every other part of the process? If it's your enemy you're fucked.
I'm not saying tariffs, let alone those tariffs, fix this, but your solution isn't one.
And I know that because it's what France has been doing. We can still make planes and submarines locally, but we don't have enough tanks and small arms to correctly maintain the small forces that oversee our crumbling colonial empire, let alone anything approaching the requirements of mass combat.
Mass can't be just bought. You need to build the factories.
I don't understand the argument here. The thing you are paying for is the construction of those factories. And the factories for the inputs. This is expensive. But so are tariffs.
And you don't need to source literally all of the inputs (for instance the electronics) domestically. China is not the only country we can import inputs from. We have allies.
Do you?
What allies do you have that produce electronics on the scale that is required? ST doesn't have the capacity. It's pretty much just Chinese foundries and TSMC.
Besides. Alliances are always temporary.
TSMC has fabs in the US now?
I don't think military tech uses latest-generation chips.
This isn't an area I have much knowledge in though.
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