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I'm sure posters here could provide a reasonable steelman for Trump's position if asked, but forget about providing arguments for a second: are there any Trump supporters here who genuinely believe this is a good set of policies, or even a not-disastrous set of policies?
I can't imagine this will be the final thing to break support for Maga types, but I would give strong odds that this goes down as a major black mark on Trump's eventual record, and a potential torpedo for any future Maga candidates
This is a bad idea, but not a disastrous one. It’ll cause a recession but we kinda need that.
The disaster will be in the government responding to the recession.
The "we" is doing a lot of work there. Maybe in some ways the country as a whole would benefit from a recession, but I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't benefit from one. And if Trump causes one, then despite despising the Democrats I might be compelled to put aside my objections to the Democrats' many many insanities and vote for them in 2026 on the principle that yeah, the Democrats care more about violent criminals than they care about me, but even in Democrat cities the chance of being the victim of a violent crime is pretty low, whereas the chance of being poor if the Republicans destroy the economy is relatively high.
A recession won’t ‘destroy the economy’. The country needs assets repriced at sane levels.
No, the real disaster will be Trump’s fifty trillion dollar stimulus package and ten thousand dollar checks to every American.
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They could give steelmans sure, but there's always been one issue with steelmanning as a concept and that it's sometimes equivalent to just making up ideas that don't actually exist in the person's head.
There's a lot of different reasons given by the Trump admin. From fentanyl, to trade deficits, to immigration, to bringing back American manufacturing, to replacing domestic tax with it, to take revenge on other countries with tariffs, to fight China, etc etc.
Some of these are even contradictory. Raising a significant amount of money to fund government with tariffs doesn't work if people stop buying foreign and start buying only those made in America from the ground up. And neither of those work as well if the goal is for them to lower their trade barriers for a bilateral drop in tariffs and protectionism on both sides.
Steelmanning just a single point (like if tariffs can help american manufacturers or if they could be used to punish foreign protectionist policy) has to just straight up ignore everything else being said. It has to be unaware of the rhetoric and reasons given in order to substitute with some "Well imagine if it wasn't actually that?" fanfiction.
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There are plenty of benefits.
Makes domestic manufacturing more competitive. The US economy can't be based on finance and a tech. Wall street and silicon valley simply don't employee anywhere near enough workers to satisfy a country with 340 million people. Having a few people make vast fortunes in the medical industry and insurance while a hundred million people sell services won't be sustainable. The US has rising income inequality and the fracture between wall street and average Joe has become way too large. If pollution happened in the same area as the consumers live we would have a far greener world.
Outsourcing increased the distance between owners and workers. American oligarchs have no connection to their workers in Vietnam. If they lived in the same city the connection would be a lot stronger. Boeing workers working at the same complex as the bosses in Seattle will be treated better than workers in Mexico.
Sovereignty: Being dependent on long international supply chains is a major risk. The world risks a bronze age style collapse if global supply chains break down. Imagine a war in Taiwan, a serious pandemic, a tactical nuclear war or a meteor shutting down a few key factories. It could upend our entire civilization. We could quickly find out that farms are dependent on some supply chain for some component we never have heard of but keeps us all fed and this factory has been knocked out. The number of suppliers that supply key components to medical care, the electrical grid, oil and similar is shockingly small. Many companies are dependent on numerous supply chains and if one of them broke down it could cause cascading effects. It may be more efficient to have 1-4 global suppliers of key components than to have dozens. However, it is far more anti fragile.
But then, are these benefits greater than the costs? That was the question, do you believe this will be good or at least not on-net bad?
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This might be more credible if Trump were not also planning to reinstate his wildly lop-sided tax cuts. Inequality is mostly downstream of fiscal policy, not trade policy - the period of major growth in inequality came in the 80s, then it stagnated in the 90s and 2000s which doesn't really match up with free trade/decline of manufacturing timelines, what it very obviously matches up with is 12 years of Republican control of the Presidency up to 1993. Inequality at the moment is roughly where it was in the early-mid 1990s.
This makes no sense as rationale for the tariffs when one looks at where and how they have been applied. I think chips have even been exempted from Taiwan's tariff rates!
As @The_Nybbler said, this makes no sense at all. How could insulating domestic manufacturers from foreign competition make them more efficient and dynamic? The very reverse process is part of what destroyed British industry. Higher tariffs barriers in the post-war period meant that, because they were not exposed to global competitive forces, British companies never kept up with the technologies and efficiencies developing all over the world, and so when firms like British Leyland arrived in the 70s and 80s they were still producing cars at the speed and quality of decades prior and were inevitably destroyed. For a developing country this logic is more reasonable because pure Geschenkron-style copying is enough for domestic industry to grow fast from a very low base, but in the position of a first-world nation this stops working because you're at the forefront of technologies and efficiencies. Hence why Chinese tariffs have come down every year for decades, because they're slowly wearing out the possibilities of copying manufacturing techniques from the rest of the world and the competitive advantage offered by low wages.
At the end of the day you have to believe Trump when he speaks. He is simply an idiot who thinks that the US should not run a trade deficit with literally any country in the world and doesn't understand anything about anything. This is not a piece of masterful grand strategy to reduce inequality and strengthen the resilience of American supply chains, Trump is just thick.
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You can't tax your way to prosperity. If you want to make domestic manufacturing more competitive, you need to stop burdening it, not protect it -- protecting it just makes the manufacturing companies and unions rich at the expense of the customers. And if you tariff raw materials too, you don't even get that; you just have what amounts to a massive tax increase.
These tariffs are the biggest risk of such a collapse. The rest of it... well, lots of it has happened. We had a serious pandemic (and a disastrous government response) and the system survived. We've had major factories shut down due to natural disasters (e.g. floods in Thailand) and the system survived. Breaking down global trade makes the system less resilient, not more.
US companies are forced to comply with EPA, OSHA, ACA, ADA, Civil rights act, unions and minimum wage.
Tariffs could be used to make the playing field equal to account for those costs. And probably we don't want more pollution and work accidents. If US company has to buy filters for their chimney - make sure that all the factories that want to import goods into US also have filters. And if they don't tax them the cost of the filter. And that they pay their labor at least as what US do.
And if they do and make a better product - well it is US problem then.
I’m skeptical of this because heavily unionized euro countries with strict environmental protection and safety laws have been able to be manufacturing powerhouses.
European manufacturing is suffering. Also Europe is largely a lot cheaper than the US. Engineers in Milan made on average 35 000 Euro last year. French electricians make around 25000 Euros a year.
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The top producers in Europe look to be Germany, Italy, France, the UK, and Ireland. Per capita their output compared to the US is about +38%, -18%, -41%, -43%, ... and +379%??!?!?!
Okay, I was looking up numbers to make a joke about how Germany is carrying the EU, but forget what I was intending to say. What the heck is going on in Ireland? They barely made the European top 5 since they've got such a low population, but they're still outproducing Spain with like a tenth of the population. They're even outdoing Switzerland, which I would have thought would be the world leader in the low-population high-value-manufacture combo. Is this just on paper somehow, some remaining accounting artifact of how they used to be incredibly popular for multinational corporate tax avoidance? I suppose their stats office does say their output is 40% "basic pharmaceuticals", plus around 20% "food products" and 10% "chemicals", but there's still ~20% composed of metal/rubber/plastic/wood/silicon stuff that we might call "stereotypical" manufacturing, and it's not like US output is all steel burnished with blood and sweat either.
It's tax dodging. You want to arrange your EU supply chain and associated transfer pricing so that most of the value added shows up in Ireland and is taxed at Irish rates. So imports of intermediate goods into Ireland are underdeclared and exports of finished goods are overdeclared.
Ireland has the highest ratio of GDP to Actual Individual Consumption of any medium or large country in the world - the Irish people are not seeing this money.
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All your suggestions for the utility of tariffs directly attack the basis for international trade -- that some countries have some sort of advantage in producing some goods over others, which makes both sides of the trade better off if it happens compared to it not happening. Tariffing the advantage so instead of the parties getting it, the government gets it, probably means the trade simply doesn't happen.
Cheap labor is not an advantage. Better technology is.
There is nothing that prevents you from making better mixer than Hobart while playing by even stricter rules than USA as Electrolux professional series shows.
Cheap labor is certainly an advantage. If I can make something with 8 hours of $5 labor that takes you 8 hours of $50 labor, I've got an advantage in making things. Yes, if you can instead make 100 of them with 8 hours of $50 labor and better manufacturing technology, the advantage shifts again, but ceteris paribus, cheaper labor gives an advantage.
Neither one does a bit of good if I just want to make a frozen margarita now and then.
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That's the example I always use with libs.
An evil polluting capitalist owns a concrete factory on the US side of the Mexican border. He needs to sell concrete to pay for his real goal of killing as many cute dolphins as possible with pollution. Captain Planet forces Congress to pass a law banning pollution forever, and mandating that only nice green dolphin-safe concrete is made in the US.
But the evil capitalist just moves his factory to the Mexican side of the border, and keeps selling cheap concrete to the US to pay for his dolphin murdering pollution!
If only there was some sort of "trade policy" to restrict the sale of evil concrete from Mexico to stop the capitalist's evil plot!
It doesn't help obviously: they agree wholeheartedly and then just forget the next day. But it's funny to watch it happen.
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Agreed. And I’m all for some level of mercantilism, but to do that you have to actually control a manufacturing base — and the US doesn’t have much of one, especially in key sectors. I agree with criticisms of NAFTA and Chinese manufacturing, but that damage was already done, and it’s insane to try and fix it by applying taxes. You have to have the manufacturing base before you can protect it.
Trump’s gambit here is equivalent to setting up an automatic turret to protect your house, but the camera pans out and what you thought was a house is actually just the still-standing facade of a house that was shelled into ruins.
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I asked this after the election, because the tariffs were on the horizon even back then.
For anyone paying attention to economics and business, 2024 was a single issue election: prevent a worst case Trump tariff scenario. Oops.
If only Harris hadn't been suggesting price controls. Damned either way.
Yeah, both sides were going to fuck up the economy, so I ended up voting on social issues, where Trump was the clear winner.
Yeah, he was doing good stuff, slashing DEI all the way back to the Johnson administration and killing parts of the government which were Democratic patronage and propaganda machines. I could forgive him some fucking of the economy for that. But not a new Great Depression which will be inevitably be followed by the Democrats bringing back all the DEI stuff AND putting in their own brand of terrible economics.
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I don't buy that the Dem establishment allows such a destructive policy. The most we should have expected is price gouging investigations into eggs or something. Maybe Harris tries to go for a wealth tax and probably does implement some annoying regulations, but a) Congress would definitely have to sign off on taxes first and b) much less bad than Trump's tariff approach.
Now if we had been talking Sanders vs Trump... I think all bets are off.
I think the best case against Harris doing just incredibly retarded economics is that Trump is, notably, not getting this through congress, and Harris has less imperium.
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In Harris's defense, she was just saying populist stuff that she had no real commitment to and would never actually implement.
Though, to be fair, I thought the same of the tariffs...
Harris was always going to implement whatever the DNC converged on believing, and the DNC is currently in a civil war that the adults in the room are losing.
That is to say, it’s entirely possible idiot breadtubers would be writing her economic policies.
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Not disastrous for whom?
I want a multipolar world with localized industry and national preference, hell I want it even more local than that if possible. So far it's a home run of everything I've ever dreamed of. Europe is seriously considering its local defense industry and in talks to trade favorably with China against the US, which still sounds unbelievable when I say it out loud.
Yeah businesses that only exist because of free trade are not going to survive, but what did y'all think the collapse of Globalism meant? vibes? papers? essays?
I get the first half, but why do you think the second half is a good thing?
Anglos in general and Americans in particular are enemies of Europe and its geopolitical interests by necessity because a unified Europe would make their thalassocracy irrelevant. They have to prevent Europe unifying at all costs, the EU, NATO and other such atlanticisms were created specifically and deliberately for this purpose.
In purely geopolitical terms, it is therefore better for Europe to ally with China than America.
I do so love Americans and their Republic and I do so loathe Communism, but if Europe wants to have even the slightest chance to be powerful again, it has to rid itself of American influence and an isolationist America is the only way this can happen realistically.
I see, thanks for explaining.
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Even if you want that, the change in tariffs from one day to another is just staggering here. Say what you will about stupid, counterproductive left-wing economics (which I'm certainly not a fan of!), but they almost always make sure that they don't rock the boat too much in the short term at least (Corona aside).
Look I hate shocks as much as anyone. There's some discussion to be had about how gradual things like this can even be done, but my main annoyance is that people are acting like this is insane on the face of it when it's merely a dubious implementation of something that the people in power don't like.
Given a certain level of risk dubious implementations can be insane. Who Trump is and how he acts cannot help but color the whole thing.
I'll try out an experimental new vacuum cleaner from a sketchy salesman. I'd be significantly more skeptical if he offered me a revolutionary new surgery. It would be insane of him to even offer.
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"People in power" here being "people who have a 401k and buy things."
I feel it might be useful here to remind you that only 30% of the US population actively participates in a 401k.
I understand that pretty much everyone is a stock holder one way or another these days, but you may be overestimating what the median person directly has to lose in a crash. And how that compares to people who own assets that aren't home equity.
In 2022 nearly 60% of American households had some stock market exposure, with a median of 50k and a mean of 480k invested. Tanking the S&P is well into the territory of materially hurting the median voter.
What do you think the word "directly" means? And why do you think I added it in that sentence?
I'm well aware most US retirement funds are invested in the S&P500.
If you acknowledge that the median American has stock market exposure, I'm not sure what there really is to argue about.
Only a minority of people are on defined benefit pension plans that are perhaps what you, as a European, envision when you think about retirement funds.
Most people are on defined contribution plans, whether that's a 401k, IRA, 403b, or some employer invested plan, are "directly" affected by the market tanking because they have no guaranteed payouts. The payouts are simply what the market provides. None of those people are gonna want to hear about how their positions taking a shit is OK because it's not "direct" exposure under some gerrymandered definition.
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Their job? Clearly America forgot their lesson from Smoot-Hawley and people will have to endure double digit unemployment again to remember it. If we're lucky this one might put Republicans out of power for twenty years again.
Well that probably won't happen but largely because Trump will probably climb part way down at some stage.
Smoot-Hawley was not the problem, the Fed was the problem. Smoot-Hawley didn't even get passed under the year after the great crash, and the slow recovery was due to deflation and monetary policy, not tariffs.
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Well that and the fact that central banks have been so laser focused on making sure a depression never happens since the 30s that people don't even think it's possible anymore.
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That's essentially all of them.
No, it's not. We're talking about businesses with razor-thin profit margins and manufacturing chains spread over three continents - losing these and producing no home-grown alternatives might be a disaster but at worst removing global free trade takes us back to 1940 not 1440.
Well I never knew 'more excess profits for producers and higher prices for consumers' was high on the list of Trump priorities. Surprised that slogan never made it on the campaign trail.
On the face of it, yes:
Tiny profits -> lowest possible price for consumers -> GOOD
which is why it's been economic dogma for decades. However, 'tiny profit margins' is another way of saying that 'your business will go into the red if a butterfly sneezes'. Your profit margin is slack, it's robustness, it's the ability to invest without leveraging yourself to the hilt, and of course it's the ability to pay your workers more than Chinese peasants. Huge amounts of foundational innovation come from places like Apple, Bell Labs, Xerox where they had the money to try out new things.
I'm not saying that Trumpian economics is definitely a great idea, I'm just not yet convinced it's a bad one.
It is not the last, because the cost of paying your workers comes out before your profit is calculated.
Precisely. If you have a very thin profit margin when you are (indirectly) employing Chinese peasants, you will have a negative profit margin if you start employing people who want higher wages. If you have a larger profit margin, then you can have more costs and still have some profit left over.
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Not 1940. 1930. If we get to the modern 1940-equivalent we'll have bigger problems, like global thermonuclear war.
Ah, so pretty much any manufacturing company.
Yes, modern manufacturing is hyper-optimised and very fragile. I think this fact is well understood.
The fundamental debate is whether this fragility + low cost + slow drain of skill is more or less desirable than trying to keep manufacturing at home, and whether the latter is possible at any decent standard.
It's hyper-optimized but it doesn't seem all that fragile seeing as we have shocks ALL THE TIME and things keep working.
You have a point. The lack of reply is because I'm thinking about it.
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I think that's overstating it, but yes most of the West's economy (in value terms) is configured for a free trade world, anybody paying attention during Covid knows this.
This is precisely the state of affairs that Trump wants undone.
Whether he has the balls to crash the American economy for years to make this transition happen remains to be seen, but it's definitely not impossible given that America has a large supply of ressources and energy.
Isn't it more likely that even if he did have the balls to do this, he is simply liquidated sometime between then and now? I can't imagine all the powers that be and all the money involved just sitting back and letting him burn it all down just for the benefit of his own need to watch things burn.
President Vance is too much of a black box. President Johnson probably really does scare the cathedral for social-issues reasons. I think by the time we have an assassin getting that far as to put Rubio in power(and the cathedral can live with Rubio), it's an unprecedented situation that nobody knows what'll happen, so the cathedral won't do it.
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That's the beauty of it: they already tried and that's how he got elected.
Not saying Trump is immune to bullets from well funded assassins, as opposed to the D team we got last time, but don't underestimate the ideological commitment of a second term president. Trump doesn't need to convince anybody anymore except congress insofar as it matters.
No, I mean by someone who is actually capable of killing him. Think more the pratorians finally being done with a particularly insane emperor than a random assassin. This is something that is only going to be able to happen once as I imagine the second Trump is dead/out of office, Congress is taking away the president's tariff powers forever.
Edited to clarify.
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For whom? Anyone who relies on the global economy for their livelihoods, which is approximately everyone on earth. Trump doesn't need to care about the wellbeing of foreigners of course, but I'm not sure how Juche thought with American characteristics will produce the desired results of Trump and his team
Do you really want me to introduce you to mercantilist economic theory? I know it's grown out of favor in the West but China is so in love with it that major Chinese economists all love to cite Friedrich List.
And no it doesn't really have much to do with Juche. Trump hasn't nationalized the means of production just yet.
Mercantilism as it was pursued - and it did not improve prosperity or any metric you care to measure - relied somewhat on colonialism. The colonial nations could tariff away as long as they could go and directly secure the materials they needed from conquered nations.
I think Trump thinks that the US has enough ressources that he doesn't need the rest of the world, or at least doesn't need them enough to allow unfavorable deals.
I don't know if he's right because modern supply chains are insanely complicated, but for the basics the US is covered: food, energy, raw materials.
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