• ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOPM
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    19 days ago

    There was no chance of tariffs alone bringing back any manufacturing, regardless of how firm of a position he took. The only way to bring manufacturing back would be through massive state intervention, the way manufacturing was originally developed in the US during WW2 period.

    • WatDabney@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      19 days ago

      Mmm… I don’t disagree with that.

      But the fact remains that by not providing any consistency upon which companies could plan, Trump destroyed any possibility of it right out of the gate.

      • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOPM
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        19 days ago

        You can disagree all you like, but there is no historical example of tariffs achieving any sort of industrialization on their own. The reality is that establishing factories, training workers, and building out supply chains requires stupendous amounts of capital investment and decades of effort to build out. No private investor is going to fund this sort of a venture because there’s no immediate profit in it, and long term situation will always be uncertain. It’s much easier to simply work around the tariffs of pass the cost down to the consumer.

        In fact, we have a perfect recent example of this happening with western sanctions on Russian energy. These sanctions didn’t result in Europe developing clean energy industry, instead they simply resulted in a massive cost of living increase for the Europeans as a result of Russian energy being bought through intermediaries like India and Turkey.