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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   32484 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 31, 2025

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Happily, MAGA does not have to choose between just the two options you listed. There is a middle path where the globalist agenda is crushed via onshoring manufacturing which yes, will increase costs for the coastal elite who own big corporations, but will also raise wages for the working and middle class.

I think it is a serious error to assume the MAGA coalition is held together by a desire to "own the libs". Thats what some figures may cathartically tweet about, but the actual voters that matter care about their jobs, the cost of groceries and morgtages, and their kids education. On all of these the proggo left has failed misrably the past few years, which is why in 2024 the GOP, not the DNC, won the lion's share of the working class vote.

There is a middle path where the globalist agenda is crushed via onshoring manufacturing which yes,will increase costs for the coastal elite who own big corporations, but will also raise wages for the working and middle class.

It could also decrease those wages, in fact it‘s very likely. First there‘s the obvious loss in purchasing power through tariff-induced inflation. And secondly, the american consumer loves consooming too much. He will eat the seed corn if you leave him alone with it. Other countries used to make up for it with their savings, ensuring the american worker‘s productivity was higher than it would be if he had to rely on his own meager savings for investment.

I find this economic story at least as plausible as trump‘s ‚my trade deficit is your profit‘ . Partly because my theory doesn‘t rely on the very adventurous claim that the rich guy is actually being exploited by the poor foreigners who send him the stuff he consumes.

Dubious and clashing economic narratives aside, you have to concede that the argument in favour of tariffs is necessarily weak and specific to certain non-typical situations, else tariffs between US states would be a good idea.

Happily, MAGA does not have to choose between just the two options you listed. There is a middle path where the globalist agenda is crushed via onshoring manufacturing which yes, will increase costs for the coastal elite who own big corporations, but will also raise wages for the working and middle class.

Or alternatively, the economy crashes as it will if the current trajority continues and the MAGA coalition gets kicked in the balls and tossed out of office in 2026 and 2028 after which all tarrif powers are taken away from the president and things are put into place to stop them from ever having this much power again.

Certainly a possibility, but I think it unlikely.

Expound if you will, People always vote against the party that is in power when a big crash happens and that is in circumstances where it isn't immediately obvious who and what caused the crash.

the cost of groceries

Is the cost of groceries going to go up or down with tariffs on imported groceries and with reduced Mexican farm labor?

After democrats have restricted demand and subsidized supply right into the toilet, republicans seem to be interested in doubling down on restricting supply but this time without demand subsidies. Have we tried increasing supply instead?

After democrats have restricted demand and subsidized supply right into the toilet

Did you mean this the other way around?

Hah, yes.

There is a middle path where the globalist agenda is crushed via onshoring manufacturing which yes, will increase costs for the coastal elite who own big corporations, but will also raise wages for the working and middle class.

Do you actually expect that onshoring manufacturing will raise wages (relative to the cost of goods and services) for the majority of working-class and middle-class Americans? Have similar approaches worked in the past?

Yes, because yes. 1945-1979 saw a massive expansion in the American manufacturing sector with wages that were, adjusting for inflation, median wages, and CoL, comparatively much higher than they are today. Now will a new American manufacturing boom look like that one? No, it will be much more heavily automated and high tech, but the funny thing about robots is they still need a large number of people to operate, maintain, repair, upgrade, and pioneer more uses for them. A factory I worked at actually hired more workers despite completely automating the actual assembly line and ended up passing out a lot of raises as people skilled up.

1945-1979 saw a massive expansion in the American manufacturing sector

A good place to start in analyzing this (which is true, btw) is to ask "why?" Better yet, to ask "what were the prevailing macro conditions that allowed this to happen?"

Tracing that, you'll probably stumble upon the answer that is accepted by all serious economists and historians; after world war 2, ALL of the countries that had the human capital, technological proficiency, and public infrastructure to support a massive scale manufacturing sector were literally blown to shit and had suffered massive amounts of prime age male death ..... except for the USA.

1945 to 1979 happened as a fait accompli because no other country on earth could - at scale - do it.

In 2025, this is not the case. We would be immediately competing (with drastically higher labor costs by law) with several other countries (two of which who have larger absolute populations than us) who have spent the last 40 years (re)developing their manufacturing sectors.

But wait - we're already close to optimal in terms of manufacturing value add. The Chinese beat us out because they have three times the population and negative three billion times the respect for human rights. So when you, or anyone, says "bring back manufacturing!" - what in the actual hell do you mean? It's already here. Especially the best of it. In terms of high-end technical manufacturing (complex systems, aircraft, large machinery, etc.) the U.S. is so far out in first it's not even a competition.

The "manufacturing jobs" people like you seem to want are, what, exactly? Lightbulbs? Tee-shirts? Flip-flops? These are not jobs that pay well. These are not jobs that support families. These are not jobs that make strong communities. These are subsistence level toil.

Shit that will never happen. Building a factory takes longer than these tariffs will ever last, which is just under four years tops if Trump is willing to let the entire GOP burn to death in the midterms. This is a historic fuckup, Trump just metaphorically blew his brains out on live TV with this shit.

You should consider that the odds of "literal war with China" happening in the next four years is relatively high, possibly 100%, the odds of the US winning are decent, and if Trump gets the US started onshoring before obliterating the industrial capacity of our main rival (which is why the US had such a nice industry between 1945 - 1979) before that happens he might be hailed as a hero and genius.

possibly 100%

The odds of me shitting my pants in the next five minutes are possibly 100%. I probably won't, but if I do then I guess the odds were 100% all along. Also you're not obliterating the industrial capacity of China WW2-style with anything less than carpet-nuking.

No, what I mean is that it is possibly already baked in – I dunno how likely this is but Trump, as POTUS, may know that we're going to war with China in less than four years.

Also you're not obliterating the industrial capacity of China WW2-style with anything less than carpet-nuking.

On the one hand, touché.

On the other hand, Chinese trade flows through overseas shipping. A war with Taiwan might involve carpet nuking levels of destruction (the Three Gorges Dam is within Taiwanese striking range) but is more likely to involve interdicting Chinese trade routes and might also involve striking their port assets. If China loses the war, its fleet, its merchant marine, and its port infrastructure, even without destroying industrial capacity or critical infrastructure it will hamper their exports for years.

Why are we going to fight a war with China? I don’t want to get nuked over Taiwan. I don’t consider this inevitable or desirable.

To destroy their AI clusters, lowering the chance of a misaligned singularity of course!

But seriously, there are lots of potential reasons. One of them is superconductor control, although I think this gets less relevant every year. One of them is that China might attack the US as part of their opening salvos against Taiwan over uncertainty as to what the US would do, which essentially would render US desires moot – there's no world where we don't respond to that.

One of the most overlooked reasons, in my humble opinion, is to stop nuclear proliferation – my understanding is that Japan views a non-CCP-aligned Taiwan as a core national security interest. I think there's a nonzero chance that if Taiwan reunifies with China, Japan acquires nuclear weapons. If Japan acquires nuclear weapons, South Korea may follow.

Nuclear weapons proliferation is arguably bad for a lot of reasons but probably one of the core ones from the perspective of US policymakers is that it undermines American power relative to the rest of the world.

If the US goes to war with China it will have to be over Taiwan. Now, given that the American right has spent the last year + in outrage at the notion of sending military aid to help a foreign nation, what do you think the reaction would be if Trump declared war in a situation where the Chinese claims are way more credible than any of the Russian bullshit. I know MAGA world hates China, but after spending years positioning itself as the remedy to failed interventionist establishment foreign policy, declaring war on China seems difficult to square with that.

After the Chinese kill American service members? Forget Trump declaring war, Congress will.

You underestimate the economic illiteracy of the Democrats. I can see them keeping the tariffs and adding more taxes and redistribution on top to "reduce the impact on marginalized members of our society"

Nah dog, that's crazy talk. It's Trump, doing the opposite of him is the only thing the Dems really stand for. They'd want to overturn this shit even if the tariffs were actually good.

Biden kept Trump's China tariffs. Trump even made a point of it during the campaign.

I can see them keeping the tariffs

Biden, who is probably the most protection-friendly figure in the entire Democratic establishment, had a whole four years and didn't do anything significant. Any of the plausible 2028 Democrats at the moment it is hard to see continuing with this policy.

You what. The 100% EV tariff and massive solar and battery tariffs he did just don't count? Or do you count on people not knowing about them?

https://x.com/HouseDemocrats/status/1908218153404117109

For today's Democratic Daily Download: meet @RepDeluzio from Western PA.

He explains how Trump's trade policy has been a chaotic mess, but that tariffs—if done right and paired with strong pro-worker and industrial policies—can help supercharge manufacturing.

We're offering hardworking Americans real policies to strengthen their families and communities—not fake populism to distract from tax giveaways to robber barons and huge corporations.

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