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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   31631 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 7, 2025

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  1. Impose huge tariffs on China to try to drive some kind of autarchic domestic manufacturing revolution.

  2. Embarrassing climbdown after the market melts down and your donors / friends get mad. Keep tariffs only on China. This means that cheap manufactured goods, clothing, widgets etc keep flowing in from South and Southeast Asia in huge volumes, so no boost to American manufacturing for any of them.

  3. Exempt electronics, computers, solar panels etc from Chinese sanctions, ensuring that even the critically important industries to national security stay 100% reliant on Chinese manufacturing because Tim Apple said that the iPhone would double in price if he didn’t get his exemption.

  4. Chinese tariffs remain at 125% on the US. Trade deficit with China widens. American manufacturing doesn’t develop at all (suppliers buy the easy stuff from elsewhere and the complex stuff from China, where the exemptions apply). Americans can’t sell anything in China.

This really is what winning looks like.

.5. Fuck up many US manufacturers who rely on parts / subassemblies / materials that don't have alternative sources outside China.

I'm sure this is all just some 6D chess...

solar panels etc from Chinese sanctions

That would be kind of a big deal -- solar panels in particular from China have been heavily tarifFed for years and years, despite that there's really no domestic industry in that area.

Are you saying that Trump is now reducing those tariffs? I don't think that's true.

The BBC article on this change specifically mentions solar cells as part of the exemption.

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