There's many fields where paying 10% extra on parts is more than worth it for shorter and more reliable supply chain. Not to mention probably better for the environment as well. The price for parts is often a small piece of the overall costs.
Seems other agree with me on that:
> And while many companies fear that moving their manufacturing to the U.S. would cost significantly more, some experts estimate that wafer production at the Arizona site is only about 10% more expensive compared to Taiwan. Despite that, the company says that its customers are willing to pay a higher price, with production already sold out until late 2027.
Also interesting that many of the new tariffs settle down to around 10%. That seems like a good balance for the US, and also similar to what European tariffs have been for many industries.
IMHO, the idea of entirely free trade is as dumb as excessive trade barriers. It's like trying to model people as purely rational agents. We're not. It's a decent starting point but we need perturbative models based on empirical information of human biases.
The ideal solution for tariffs is likely a distribution function with a peak around 5-15% with a steep drop off toward 0% and a longer tail for higher tariffs. Because 0% just leaves you open to any market manipulations of malicious foreign actors and corporations looking to offshore for a few cents of profits while higher tariffs lead to increasing protectionism and local companies becoming lax and inefficient.
That would just so happen to align well with these extra cost to manufacture in the USA in this instance.