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This post is about Tariffs, again, lest I be accused of burying the lede. Just read the last two paragraphs if you don't enjoy window dressing.
China tightened regulations on real estate developers in 2020. Xi Jinping stated 'houses are for living, not speculation.' Ghost cities, huge numbers of Chinese citizens owning multiple houses as investment vehicles, I assume you're all familiar with the stories after five years of news stories and discussion. Economists and western commentators largely agreed that the policies were A Really Bad Idea due to the ensuing chaos and meltdown in property prices.
To which I have to say ...what? They said they wanted to reduce housing costs! What did you think that would look like? How else are you going to do it? And what do you think it would look like to 'make housing more affordable' in the USA? If the YIMBYs and
neoliberalsabundance socialists get their way, home prices are going to tank here too. This is a good thing! Maybe there's some Chestertonian benefit to the upwards spiral of housing costs, but this here's a fence I'm ready to take a torch to.Anyways, to inch closer to the issue at hand - I have to confess that I had some tepid enthusiasm for Trump returning to office. Despite it all, I'm still an Elon stan and I thought some of the Dogemaxxers might have cogent arguments. I had some hope for racking up some China tariffs, eating bitterness for a few years and coming out the other end as a cohesive autarkical bloc of NATO + AUKUS + Japan + South Korea + anyone not named Putin or Jinping we can convince to join the squad. Setting aside my disappointments with Trump 2.0...
I'm utterly perplexed by the dialogue around tariffs? I can remember breathless fearmongering about shortages, empty shelves, inflation all spring. People on reddit posted invoices where what used to be a 10,000$ order from China was now over 50,000$. And yet...none of this chaos has come to pass? As far as I can tell, TACO is somewhat responsible, but also, average US tariff rates are just over 50% on Chinese goods?. Is it all TACO? If 50% tariffs have been painless, do you expect me to believe that 100% tariffs will truly be apocalyptic to the US economy? Do any of the firmly anti-tariff crowd have an explanation or prediction to make?
And on the other side, I fully expect victory laps and crowing about 4D chess from the 'Trump BTFOs retarded soyboy economics ExPeRtS crowd' again, but if the tariffs are painless and everyone is still buying cheap shit from China, aren't we losing??? Isn't the inflation, the spike in prices and the empty shelves the point of this whole exercise? Why are you promising people it will be painless, rather than YesChadding and telling them that the pain is the goal? You can have affordable housing when you're willing to accept that your own home will depreciate in value, and you can have low-skill manufacturing in your country when you're willing to accept higher prices for your goods. Eat bitterness with a smile on your face. Tell your daughter she only gets two dolls instead of 30 this Christmas because
communismuncle Jerry with the high school degree needs a better job.It does count as tax revenue, so to the extent you care at all about deficits and debt, that's at least helpful.
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