In defense of tariffs

another example is rexall which mckesson sold last year. again due to low density and razor thin margins that only canadian companies are used to

100% global free trade. That's the only outcome where these were good.

enjoy the third term too, tranny

This thread and this article give a good overview:

x.com/tanvi_ratna/status/1907880105369845865

x.com/CampbellJAustin/status/1907865457421664294

There is one thing you can't argue around, though, and that's that the completely global tariffs sorted by TLD, and the way the tariffs are "calculated" are both so retarded that this is a huge loss of face for the US govt. There's no "4D chess" excuse for shit this dumb.

there are terminally online retards out there who think the country is on the brink of a Soviet Union-style collapse as a base case

The most depressing part of this whole thing is how stupid Americans turned out to be in the end.

Because suddenly the domestic companies actually have competition and their model of "high prices for shit plans" is completely economically unviable. Let me put it this way, even fucking COMCAST in the US gives a way better deal than fucking Bell.

oh yeah I'm definitely taking policy insights from....Hank Heil...very seriously
very serious and valuable opinions here

This is why reddit kicked you retards out
Now you just shit up Anon Babble, the place where you don't get banned for being a retarded internet shit spreader

House prices might crash and all the speculating boomers using housing as a commodity will be in the shit

This approach isn’t without risks. If domestic supply chains can’t catch up, or if global retaliation kicks in, inflation could rise again.

That's not a "if". There's no way domestic industry can fill the void at a lower price, and retaliation is all but certain by at least a few major actors

free shit

Since when is the trading of goods for capital "free"? Trump's entire mindset is "if we import more from a country than we export to it, then America is 'losing' against them". The only way you can really undo that is to make the dollar near-worthless like the yuan is and just not let anyone else produce anything.

it has to be complicate because... it just has to ok!

Ask chatgpt about the smoot-hawley act and thr tarriffs of 1828 for historical context that this shit is a bad idea

The "slow but certain decay" is mainly because of falling birth rates and the increasing levels of mediocrity and anti-intellectualism among white people.

JD Vance actually picked up on this perfectly in Hillbilly Elegy. White people in the South drop out of high school, become alcoholics/addicts, can't hold a job, and then blame all their failures on DEI and trannies.

I think it's mainly a red scare cos of China and just being slowly squeezed out of the hegemony

thanks, these are good. Just seeing "trade good, tariff bad" was getting tiresome

China's desperate need to rise is utterly crippling them as a country at the same time, we could just sit back and do NOTHING and they'll bankrupt themselves out of a need to reach the top.

ah yes, this Hank Heil is surely an intelligent person who does have something important to say and not some overconfident Anon Babblefag who like to writes a lot of his political inspired rants.

competition, RETARD

I guess that is one possibility but what if they succeed?

regardless of what the guy says why are you being credentialist, do you need your opinions to come from a certified MSNBC source or something

Since when is the trading of goods for capital "free"?

Since the "capital" comes from sovereign debt which will never be repaid. Mercantilist nations are using that debt to buy things like real estate and they are willing to consume less to attract US offshoring. When the US has no more significant industry to offshore, foreign nations will stop accepting debt and the US will be forced into trade balance.

So when is it better to start moving towards trade balance? When you still have some industry and most of your national resources are still internally owned. Or when you have no more industry and all your resources are owned by foreigners and you don't have the economic sovereignty to expropriate them?

Trade balance will come.

youtu.be/1ts5wJ6OfzA?si=z8sYJbro2k0Wk3IK

Good overview of the situation - basically hee trying to use tariffs as leverage to force us out of the current neoliberal world order and into one more resembling pre-Regan while also driving manufacturing back home. America has lost so much manufacturing due to free trade that it is essentially fucked if another war happens. Remember, America thrived after WW2 because Europe's manufacturing industry was decimated. Now they have nothing and are scrambling to even the field before China pulls a fast one

I guess that is one possibility but what if they succeed?

Then they'll be a world power with no money

I don't see how if China succeeds in establishing the Chinese century they would end up broke

has anyone got a steelman or link to arguments in favor of this?

sorry, can't spare you any straw right now, let alone steel.

Bandwidth and right of way for cabling are regulated monopolies. If your government allows telecom to be rentseekers, the foreign investment is just going to buy them and keep doing the same thing.

It's government preventing effective competition, not lack of foreign investment.

Or when you have no more industry and all your resources are owned by foreigners and you don't have the economic sovereignty to expropriate them?

You can expropriate them at any time, the power of the dollar is nothing in the face of the power of the gun. When the US entered WW2 the government through a single movement of a pen forcibly seized all Japanese assets in the country.

Because they're trying to establish it through so much deficit spending that their debt increases basically double with each year.

It's obviously bait.

PRAISE LORD KEK AND THE GOD-EMPEROR

Nobody has said that unironically for, like, eight years.

You can expropriate them at any time

Not when you are a thirdy dependent on imports for everything, see Argentina.

The US will get to thirdy status eventually with these deficits and then the trap will be sprung. This is how mercantilism works.

Everything is fine, dumbass.

lol

Not when you are a thirdy dependent on imports for everything, see Argentina.

It's kinda hard to do that with the world's biggest military and second-biggest nuclear stockpile.

So usually big abrupt changes have been followed by people getting shafted. But the first thing that usually happens is that everybody gets free things and then they get shafted. but so far i havent seen anyone get shit so. Theres also the fact that its probably not just Donald Trump and Elon. Cant say because i dont know whats the next phase of the plan.

Not a credible threat, just like it's not for Putin.

if another war happens.

The US wins. There is no if, ands, or buts about this, if an actual total war scenario happened, the US isn't losing that. Even in a complete nuclear exchange, unless the country on the other side is Russia (in which case the economic argument is pointless because they had a smaller economy than fucking Italy pre-2022), no other country has enough nukes to destroy the US but the US has enough to completely glass them.
Understand that fighting an all-out war between major powers is not the same thing as fighting an anti-insurgency campaign. The US is much better at the former than the latter (and honestly everyone but Israel kinda sucks at the latter because they don't give a shit about the fallout of just wantonly killing civilians)

The tariffs are being near universally panned

NPC brain

Bro if a war ever happened America would be FUCKED!!

That wasn't the case even during World War Two, when the Axis Powers had more comparable navies. Are you implying that if we remained on good terms with Europe that, somehow, China's shallow water missile destroyers that make up 70% of their tonnage will teleport from the South China Sea to the Atlantic and ownzone the entirety of the US, France, UK, and Germany's navies? Things would just get mildly more expensive if we couldn't buy from China. We wouldn't be fucked. There's a reason we stopped fracking, after all, and it wasn't because of environmental concerns.

B-BUT WHAT IF A EUROPEAN COUNTRY TURNS ON US?!

Then we kill them, easily, because they're probably going to turn on the rest of Europe as well. You're getting scared by shadow puppets, anon. What's happening right now is quite literally the worst outcome. Because now we ARE fucked.

OK, show me the non-NPCs since you are in the know

why are you being credentialist,

besides the obvious joke this guy has no clue
he's exactly the type of person to read one book (or in this case watch a video by his own admission) and just rolls with it, he's just hyperfocused on bullshit
I'd like to see an actual legible argument but that definitely isn't one

you are actually evil. I hope you're treated the way you treat others.

When they're being fucking dumped.

consumer surplus and quantity consumed go down

domestic producers pick up some of the difference as revenue

rest is dead weight loss

???

Domestic producers use the additional revenue to pay out pensions and give execs a raise while the average worker gets nothing and no jobs are created

Tariffs have the power to gracefully bring the purchasing power of the dollar back up and create domestic jobs. That won't happen without some teeth from the legislative branch ensuring the handouts domestic corporations get with these tariffs are used for the good of their employees (lmao as if). What seems more likely is that the boomer manager class takes the money and runs, the world figures out that these boomer managers weren't actually doing anything valuable, and everything crashes here while the Chinese and Israelis buy out our future for pennies on the dollar.

The steelman is that it's a negotiation tactic to get other countries to remove their tariffs on the United States.

Globohomo - the post

Everyone is retaliating today. In fact today will go down in history as retaliation day

This is why reddit kicked you retards out

The steelman is that it's a negotiation tactic to get other countries to remove their tariffs on the United States.

You know you are talking to a retard when you read this, the one who sabotaged lower barriers to trade was Trump in 2016 when he nuked the TTIP and TTP, thinking he wants that now is retarded he just wants to know who will be his vassals

Based

Let's give a month or 2 see how things play out.

I didn't say this was my argument. He asked for the steelman.

His theory that long term this will reignite American manufacturing can't be currently disproven.

His theory that long term this will reignite American manufacturing can't be currently disproven.

lel

Anon, answer me this: where are you going to get the steel to build all of the factories that will have to be built to replace tariff'd supply? Where are you going to get all of the construction equipment, concrete, and machinery? Is everyone just supposed to go "well damn I guess we'd better buy the entire world's concrete and steel supplies for the next twenty years"?

Hank Hell. From the halloween episode

Shhh, don't take this from them. They desperately need a hollow and meaningless victory now, more then ever. They're genuinely losing it. They are not okay. Let them have this.

Dubya bumps steel tariffs up to 30% in '02

Boomers take the money and run, slamming the door behind them

Many such cases

if tariffs actually work

if

This isn't an explanation of why tariffs work, it's just fanfiction written on the assumption that they do
Unfortunately the only arguments for tariffs revolve around government affairs:
They raise tax revenue, they increase the capability of the country to wage a large scale war, they create political patronage networks that support the republican party. When it comes to the average citizen they are unambugously negative.

The ROI of imported machinery will distort most investments, it is better to just sit this one out as this policy will be reversed by the democrats in 4 years, no one will commit to this with this much uncertainty and all costs of investment through the roof. If the US was like China I could "buy" some of these arguments but in a liberal democracy this is just shooting yourself in the foot

US companies are just going to shrug and wait it out while charging normal people more, yeah.

risk it all to rise again

That's what the new deal was and it worked, this is a deliberate effort to crash the market and he'll tell his buddies when to buy back in the day before he cans the tariffs.

No one is going spend hundreds of billions building factories and plants on the basis of schizo trade policy that very well might be reversed next week/month/quarter/year (All these are the same on the timeline that it takes to build factories and completely reorient supply lines)

reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/honda-produce-next-civic-indiana-not-mexico-due-us-tariffs-sources-say-2025-03-03/

Don't you ever get tired of being wrong all the time? It must wear on your psyche.

tariffs doesn't prevent the slow but certain decay, it quite literally just accelerate it

Did this ever actually shake out?

"Sources say"

lol

Honda already has capital investments in the US and that plant is centered to produce in the US. That plant was going to be built in America regardless, what will probably happen is that they slow down construction until tariffs get lowered to save costs. This policy can be reverted any minute and won't last more than 4 years so anything that you build now is basically overspending

What did the sources say? That no one will ever spend money on a factory?
Nope, 2028 start date.

That's fair. And the Guanajuato plant will still be there. But it still represents manufacturing jobs moving from Mexico to the US.

I mean did Honda ever actually announce anything or does this remain in "Sources say" hell? If they never announced this officially, it means fucking nothing. Hell, even if they did this bullshit might just get them to cancel it in the 4 years between.

But it still represents manufacturing jobs moving from Mexico to the US.

I mean sure but that is a very narrow picture, car manufacturing is one of the industries that still remains in North America, but Trump wants to steal manufacturing to China, and so far nothing of the sorts is expected to happen. The main issue with this policy is reversability, even if Trump's plan was genius the democrats will reverse it, so taking up any extra costs due tariffs when you can sit out investments for 4 years sounds like the smartest option.
Multinationals are hyperfinancialized and any small hits on the ROI have to be priced in either on the future price of the good or the project and the incentive is not there to use this years to rump up production when the cost structure has balloned and is expected to go down

more than 4 years

more like <2 years max
or 2 more weeks for all we know

Btw 62% of the US exports are manufactured goods which is around 1T USD. The US manufacturing output is 2.5T USD which means 40% of what gets manufactured in the US gets exported. If there are retaliatory tariffs this is not very bullish for manufacturing either as 40% of its output could take a massive hit

It's funny because Trump's pathological lying works directly against itself.

If this chart was true and every place in the world already had 40+% tariffs on US goods, then moving manufacturing to the US would be a losing play in any case.

the argument is that it is a step in a larger plan of reindustrializing and reshoring

Biden with his IRA and chips act did more industrializing and reshoring than Trump in his both tenures combined.
The US just became a toxic place to invest in due the volatility of its politics, the bipolar foreign policy making it an unreliable partner and the unprofessionalism of its political stablishment.
I thought Biden wasn't a great president but he is going to be remembered as a great president compared to Trump who is going to go down in history as the worst president the US ever had (at least for now)

can't be currently disproven.

I think this might be the (unfortunate) defense that the best case will take years or even decades to realize

Nice Y axis you got there.

The vaccine is being near universally accepted as Safe and Effective, anyone got an argument why I shouldn't get injected asap?

My favorite thing about that chart is every nation "charging 10%" just negotiated lower tariffs and retards still think this is reality.

JD Vance is actually a genius because he realized that Americans are fucking retarded and just went full scam/grifter mode. He is the Microsoft tech support scam caller VP, and you have to respect him for that.

US economy does not benefit from USD being the leading reserve currency as it necessitates USD expansion increases with global trade, this creates a de facto price control on US labor, what do price controls yield? Shortages. Hence the falling labor participation since ‘71.

By tariffing everyone, the US forces the world to either:
A) subsidize the US gov by debasing proportionally (an effective tax cut on Americans)
B) stop using USD as reserve currency (USD falls in value, trade deficit shrinks, labor participation rises)
C) Some combination of A & B

b-but the next administration will just scrap the tariffs!

That’s the beauty, they won’t be able to. Tariffs will constitute ~10% of tax revenue by 2028, which would require the next admin to either jack up income taxes (always unpopular) or run a larger deficit (becomes increasingly difficult as USD falls from reserve status)

b-but china/EU will become reserve currency!!

We have bitcoin now, no need to use statist shitcoins as reserve currency

Because de-industrializing is not a good thing, the western world will eventually fall under the influence of China. The US needs to be an industrial power as well as a financial and military power.

policy will be reversed by the democrats in 4 years

Just like Biden started appointing judges to the WTO appelate court?

There are large bipartisan forces in government who think mainstream economists who pretend mercantilism isn't real are retarded. Trump is the fall guy for destroying the international status quo and when the dust is settled it could easily be treated as the new normal. Or maybe instead of tariffs, they use import certificates.

Bro, the US is the developed nation with the highest GDP growth in per capita terms by far and it is mostly due the USD.

retard doesn't even understand why the country is rich in the first place

jesus fucking christ we are so fucked

It is simple. American companies will be steamrolled by the Chinese competition over the next 10-15 years, and America's political elite realizes this. They also realize that America's political system is too dysfunctional to do what would be needed to improve America's competitiveness. So instead they're closing the gates and hiding behind a tariff wall.

bipartisan forces in government

Yes and those are more likely to impeach Trump and reverse the tariffs than to mantain this policy. What was the consensus was more alike to what Biden did with subsidies, selective tariffs and building a closed loop trading block with western countries and Japan

US economy does not benefit from USD being the leading reserve currency

10/10 bait or 10 IQ.

Yes and those are more likely to impeach Trump and reverse the tariffs than to mantain this policy

If you acknowledge mercantilism is real you need an actual road to forcing trade balance, there are two. Tariffs and import certificates.

Modern mercantilism is through subsidies and industrial policies, import substitutions are obsolete and only done by South American countries with stagnant economies.

just give it to me straight, do I buy my BMW M3?

Tariffs will constitute ~10% of tax revenue by 2028

this is the american version of the india superpower pasta

you need an actual road to forcing trade balance

You don't need to force trade balance at all you fucking retard. You have the entire world making shit for you and they let you buy it from them with a currency that you can print as much as you want which is also backed by fucking nothing.
And you somehow think this is a bad deal

Modern mercantilism is through subsidies and industrial policies

Wage surpression, currency manipulation, preventing export of low value added inputs.
Sorry, I forgot one option ... tit for tat mercantilism. But that would lead to a trade war as certainly as tariffs.

If you acknowledge mercantilism is real then forcing trade balance must be considered desirable. Import certificates make the most sense.

We have bitcoin now, no need to use statist shitcoins as reserve currency

I'm gonna lose it, these people are actually ill

you need an actual road to forcing trade balance

Vietnam is NEVER going to buy as much from the US as the US does from Vietnam, it is IMPOSSIBLE

And you somehow think this is a bad deal

It's not sustainable. If the current deficits continue eventually there is zero industry and foreigners own all the land and real estate inside the US. What then? They'll continue handing shit out for free?

The rest of the world as a whole can be in trade balance with the US though.

It's not sustainable.

Nothing in economy ever is 'sustainable'. It is currently the best deal possible for the US and allowed the country to get immensely rich.
What is being proposed now is far less sustainable than what we're doing right now.

One step closer to absolute poverty.
One step closer to China taking over the world.
Isn't that great?

If you acknowledge mercantilism is real then forcing trade balance must be considered desirable. Import certificates make the most sense.

The US refused to implement the bancor in Breton Woods, that automatically solves these issues, it is not that complicated

i literally know nothing about tariffs, all i know is that libshits are wrong about everything so it must be good

the absolute state of this board

It's just miggers, they have flooded the whole fucking internet to try and defend the godking from reality.

the absolute state of this board

The entirety of Anon Babble you mean.

Tariffs are only good for protecting critical industries that can't compete in a global market.

Otherwise you're making everyone else pay more to enrich a handful of workers. I'm in the auto sector: we can be used to build shit in case of war, and while I like you all being forced to buy American made cars, it's going to make me richer at all of your expense.

I'm in the auto sector: we can be used to build shit in case of war, and while I like you all being forced to buy American made cars, it's going to make me richer at all of your expense.

That would only make sense if there were targeted tariffs for imported whole cars only, most "American made" cars already use majority imported parts that will be raped by tariffs regardless since they're universal.
Then add American labor costs on top.

The US refused to implement the bancor in Breton Woods

The US just spoke for everyone else ... it was retarded utopianism. China would never sign on today either. Any realistic measure to achieve trade balance needs to be able to be imposed unilaterally.

The steel man is "all my enemies are wailing and gnashing their teeth so I'm for it."

I didn't say they made sense. Frankly I'm terrified of the future, but we're seeing some shifts to domestic manufacturing already.

GM for example is shifting truck production from Mexico to Indiana because it's relatively easy to do (they both make trucks already) and we already make a killing on trucks.

even if the tariff plan made sense, it wouldn't work because it'll take too long and the next president (which is almost assured to be a democrat) will undo it all

Bro we literally don’t think or give a fuck about you at all, just present your argument like a normal person (American)

it quite literally just accelerate it

SAAR PLZ DO NEEDFUL SAAR

Four years is plenty time to lock us in a direction

"insert word" class

Every time.

you're actually not getting any of that, retard lol

not when the plan is reorganizing and bringing back massive industries to america. they don't operate on 4 year timeframes

2 years*
midterms will be a bloodbath and all of this bullshit will be thrown out
but the more likely outcome is this all gets scrapped way before midterms so they can get their AIPAC paychecks and lay low for the rest of this shit show term

even if the tariff plan made sense, it wouldn't work because it'll take too long and the next president (which is almost assured to be a democrat) will undo it all

4 years of trade disruption is a long time, Covid squared. If Trump sticks to his guns, it will utterly annihilate existing supply chains.

Democrats can't just go back and they don't want to. Much like Afghanistan, everyone was looking for a way out from existing globalisation. Much like Afghanistan, stupid solutions work if you are willing to be stupid enough.

to force us out of the current neoliberal world order

I'd have a much better time believing talk like this if Musk, the zuck AND Bezos weren't right behind him at the inauguration. He can say he's on our side but so long as Bezos is at his back it can't be true. This is no doubt just another phase of the sumerian swindle.

this. everyone you all hate is right behind him
or is zuckerburg le based now? lol

it will utterly annihilate existing supply chains

Why? You think Nike is going to look at $1/hour + 40% and decide they would rather pay $15/hour + 0%?
At most they'll move to another country so it's $1.05/h + 20%.

Based. Let it become so.

I'd like all that stuff too but it's not happening dude
you're getting fooled into thinking stuff you want is happening so that you get pacified

but they all trashed DEI and went on joe bogan's podcast so they ARE based now
remember when based musk fake-inhaled some weed? probably not as good as the ketamine he's used to

oh yeah I'm definitely taking policy insights from....Hank Heil...very seriously

he doesn't know about bucktardwater

Don't forget the H1B jeets, we are also getting jeets.

Jew fucking orange faggot nigger lover. Trump is the biggest fucking orange nigger ever. Someone in the media should just confront him and call him a massive Orange Jew kike nigger.

Base

You don't need to argue with these people.
They've never even said the word "tariff" out loud before Trump was elected. And all of a sudden liberals are tariff experts that were protecting America from this even though they've never mentioned it before in their life.

Why?

Price of a ton of luxury goods is going to go through the roof, consumption is going to plummet and companies will go bankrupt.

Trump actually sticking to this is apocalyptical.

Some companies will see reduced demand, maybe some industries that depend on the US will die but the vast majority will simply shrink and focus on other markets.
As much as people like to pretend it is the US isn't the world and with the shrinking middle class US purchasing power has been falling for decades.

Counterpoint, no one is going to risk getting caught out every election cycle on tariff threats and move production back to America.

Why do you niggers and Jews hate America so much MAGAkike? That nigger country of Zimbabwe did something very similiar. I guess MAGAnigs love monkeymen like Mugabe oooohh aaah I'm an orange nigger lover me love banana ooooah aaah..

Thats great cause now we can raise tariffs on them and they will actually see the effects kick in even moreso than just lower sales

They will and almost 2 trillion actually

whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/03/president-trump-is-putting-american-workers-first-and-bringing-back-american-manufacturing/

inb4 "we can't trust this because i hate trump"
There are sources within the statement

i am making assumptions because that is the only way I can pretend to have a "gotcha" after being wrong

Tariffs are easily defendable. Free market works on competitive advantage to increase wealth in a gdp basis, however a nation isn't just a collection of businesses.

If less productive people get outcompeted by $2/hour labor in another country, it doesn't matter how much "wealth" that creates, if those people are now fundamentally unemployable, turning into a mix of welfare recipients and criminals, future communist party members, etc. This is the end result of competitive advantage, complete destruction of the low-iq workforce over time, leading to societal instability and low trust environments.

Tariffs are needed to create redundancy at a national level so that the guys who are only smart enough to work with their hands can stay employed and not get washed out. Similar argument for young people entering the workforce, teenagers, etc. People constantly point to the graphs of how boomers had so much more spendable income, or how wages became stagnant relative to the cost of everything, but don't stop to think why that is. Jobs were exported to where it was cheaper, increasing "wealth" but leaving behind entire demographics at a genetic level domestically, while investing into foreign markets.

The myth of competitive advantage falls apart when you look at many factors, in this case I mentioned iq-based unemployment, but the model also falls apart when you start looking at how leverage works at a national level (financial, military, population, etc). We made China the threat is today thanks to competitive advantage. If we had tariffed supply surplus nations to begin with America would have stayed proportionally wealthy and everyone else would have stayed broke to our obvious benefit.

For instance I doubt economists consider that when one nation gets the material superiority to have loitering kamikaze drones enforcing curfew on every street the game ends completely.