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Tariffs are just a mechanism to adjust the calculus of where something is made. Consumers getting Nd:YAG lasers from China below cost are also weakening the laser supply chain elsewhere. Tariffs are a type of response to these situations.
Tariffs are supposed to change consumer behavior. What's next? Is Bloomberg going to be telling us that fluoridation is preventing tooth demineralization and not actually helping the Communists?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would take many years for production to meaningfully ramp up, but there absolutely is a lot of land in California that could be used to grow avocados if it made economic sense.
So, on to the next example: Brazilian coffee.
But those areas don't have anywhere close to the land of Brazil, Columbia or Vietnam.
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Another example: bauxite ore (Australia is our chief partner in that IIRC). USA somehow is missing the raw ore for Aluminum despite nearly everyone else in the world having it.
There's lots of things we can't make
Tariffs are just a mechanism to adjust the calculus of where something is made. Consumers getting Nd:YAG lasers from China below cost are also weakening the laser supply chain elsewhere. Tariffs are a type of response to these situations.
If you mean that we exploit Chinese people by not giving them the proper salary, living standard and retirement fund, yeah true
But parallel to that, automatization has reached a level we never had before.
I don't think tarifs would lead to more capital in USA in the right/expected pockets.
"Not Foreign Companies"? They can both pay. Taxes are negative-sum.
They will not. Because the sellers can sell to another country without the tariff. American buyers have no alternative.
American buyers, however, can buy their products from anyone in the world. They can choose to buy domestically, or to import from countries that have lower tariffs.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So, on to the next example: Brazilian coffee.
Technically Hawaii and maybe Puerto Rico. But those areas don't have anywhere close to the land of Brazil, Columbia or Vietnam. -------- Another example: bauxite ore (Australia is our chief partner in that IIRC). USA somehow is missing the raw ore for Aluminum despite nearly everyone else in the world having it. There's lots of things we can't make
Something not quite the same, but parallel is happening with Florida oranges:
> Only 12m boxes of oranges will have been produced in Florida by the end of this year (2024), ... The figure is 33% lower than a year ago, and less than 5% of the 2004 harvest of 242m boxes.
> It is also dwarfed by the 378m boxes expected to be produced this year in Brazil
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/22/florida-oran...
A reminder, most tariffs will not be paid because consumers will just shift their spending habits to match or just buy less. Tariffs are a double edged sword because the hurt purchasing power of consumers without really generating much money for the government. The administration is going to focus on the fact that tariffs don't really drive inflation, but are going to miss the forest for the trees: prices won't go up…
Here's a thing with a punitive tariff on it. People won't buy it because the price went up too much. It is because prices went up that nobody buys it. (And we all become poorer because we can afford less, whether or not the price increase shows up in the inflation statistics.)
Tariffs have their own Laffer Curve just like income taxes do. Sure, you can set them so that the government gets zero (or close) revenue. But you don't have to. You can set them so that the government gets quite a bit of money. (Note well: I am not claiming that Trump is setting them there.)
Maybe calling these "import taxes" instead of "tarrifs" would help emphasize that to the average voter?