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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   25427 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 27, 2025

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I would argue that free trade made the US the economic superpower it is today. Of course, there is such a thing as being a victim of your own success. To bring back low-margin manufacturing, one would need to crash the US dollar. If the dollar is low, US products will be cheap on the world market, while Americans will have a hard time paying for international alternatives. However, this would not be in the best interests of the US.

While some people care about the US manufacturing physical goods, very few want to work in manufacturing. The fraction of Americans who are envious of the job and life quality of an Indian working in plastics manufacturing is basically zero.

I think protectionism makes sense for supply chains which are of strategic importance. But that only covers a small fraction of products. Raising tariffs on USB cables until people will start to manufacture them domestically will not help your economy.

USB cables contain microprocessors and are a security risk, I would absolutely prefer not to use ones manufactured by a hostile state.

I admit that I was thinking of USB-A to USB-B cables, which are supposed to be completely passive.

Also, I think that that level of paranoia is going to be prohibitively expensive if you want to protect the US public at large from supply chain attacks.

The compromise would be to have a process to manufacture USB cables in the US using vetted companies which employ vetted citizens for 100$ apiece to supply the needs of the NSA and the Pentagon (where BYOD is presumably forbidden), and let the rest of the US buy 5$ cables from China and risk supply chain attacks which spy on their printer communication.

I would argue that free trade made the US the economic superpower it is today.

The US was already an economic powerhouse by the start of WWII, before free trade. After WWII, it was absolutely dominant. Free trade was good, but it wasn't the making of the superpower status.

However, this would not be in the best interests of the US.

Certainly of a lot of voters. But some countries run on intentionally-devalued currencies --- China has been accused of this before. It doesn't drastically change the balance of internal trade, but makes your products more competitive globally for export, presumably allowing investment at scale for a longer-term payoff. The pluses of a valuable currency only show up if you're buying global commodities (oil prices), imported luxury goods, or taking international vacations (which is favorable only to the monied fraction that is going on those vacations). It need not directly hit anything valued in terms of "hours of domestic labor", like construction.

ETA: you're probably right about USB cables, but I'm not convinced about phones and computers, which are mostly automated production lines.

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