Tariffs are not a new concept and have been used historically to build economies. Top China analysts in the Obama administration credited its economic rise to protective tariffs and high barriers to entry for any foreign companies to sell in country.

I’m probably a bit older than most lemmy users and remember when tariffs were a major talking point for democrats as a positive thing to protect American jobs. Hell, growing up in the Midwest, all my dad and his buddies that worked union jobs had to vote democrat because of their aggressive tariff policy to protect their jobs.

So what if trump is right about tariffs and it reinvigorates the American economy? Will people find another reason to credit the success to? Will it be the end of blue collar voting for the democrats?

Edit: Markets are rebounding hard, I bought low, glad Lemmy is full of pseudo intellectual economic morons. How is Lemmy going to cope now?

  • @bluegreenwookie@bookwormstory.social
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    1011 days ago

    I can’t imagine that it happens. Usually tariffs are targeted but Trump is doing large scale blanket tariffs. The world economy is much more intertwined than it used to be. Even if factory jobs were brought back there are many problems with that.

    Firstly to avoid tariffs everything for the product would need to be made in the US and very little is made completely in a single country these days.

    Second the same applies to all the factory equipment.

    Then you have to ask would factories employ people at large rates or would they automate?

    I could go on but i feel like the point has been made why blanket tariffs are bad

  • @BigMikeInAustin@lemmy.world
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    811 days ago

    Probably MAGAs will feel so vindicated they will literally start murdering people opposed to Trump.

    We’ve already seen quite a few shooting, and attacking the Capitol, and most of the people getting off mostly free.

    So we’ll see even more of it.

  • @mmddmm@lemm.ee
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    3511 days ago

    Yes, as you said, they aren’t a new concept. We have plenty of evidence, of countries that tried that again and again. We know what he is doing is stupid.

    Besides, your theory on tariffs won’t even get to be tested. Kidnapping people at random on the street and sending them to concentration camps has an overwhelmingly larger impact on the economy than the tariffs. People from outside of the US will only focus at this if you start to invade other countries, but at this point, nobody inside the US should be concerned with tariffs, at all.

  • @Drewmeister@lemmy.world
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    1711 days ago

    He won’t be right about tariffs because he (and you, I suppose) has a gross misunderstanding about how tariffs should be implemented. Tariffs are typically used to strengthen a local product. Say that we wanted to support Napa wine. We might introduce a tarrif on importing wines from our largest competitors. This would increase the cost of the foreign product in relation to the domestic product and encourage consumers to buy locally. So, why won’t this work if we just tarrif everyone for everything? Well, we don’t make everything so they’re isn’t a local option to buy instead. Not just for you, but for the companies that make the things you consume. Oh, then let’s just build up the industries to make everything. Even disregarding that we don’t have the ability to produce everything due to, well, climate and resources, that would cost many millions of dollars and years of investment before seeing a profit. Which is a nice idea if businesses had any faith that the tariffs are permanent, which they don’t not only because the current administration (likely lol) won’t be in power forever, but also because the current administration has said that they are willing to negotiate. So why bother making the investment when you can import again soon? And lastly, if we try to strong-arm everyone at the same time, they’ll just band together without us. They don’t need to trade with us if they have an alternative in a more profitable trade partner, and we’ve just incentivized the entire world to look for a better option than us. We did that. All at once. The idiocy is frankly astounding.

  • Libra00
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    11 days ago

    What we have seen before are small, narrowly focused tariffs. This is about as not- that as it’s possible to be and still be tariffs. So if Trump is somehow right the response will be to question everything we know about economics because we are now living in an alternate time line where taking a hammer to a complex issue that needs a scalpel will have somehow worked for literally the first time in human history. But, ya know, ask silly questions, get silly answers.

  • @actionjbone@sh.itjust.works
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    8011 days ago

    He is not.

    A tariff is a tax that increases the price of imported goods.

    Tariffs are used to push people toward domestic alternatives to imported goods.

    However, today, there are no domestic alternatives to most important goods.

    So, all it’s doing is increasing the burden on the average person.

    Companies are not going to invest in domestic production. They are going to spend that money lobbying to have tarriffs removed. Because guess what? Once tariffs go away, consumer prices are not going to go back to what they used to be. Instead, megacorps are going to pocket the difference as profit.

  • @rc__buggy@sh.itjust.works
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    1411 days ago

    Wait, you were a child of the Great Depression? 'cause the US has been promoting free trade with low tariff rates since the end of WWII

    • @Scipitie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      911 days ago

      I disagree: there are no stupid questions - but there are loaded questions, questions with wrong assumptions baked in or statements with a questionmark attached.

      Small difference but I found my life way better when differentiating between “person doesn’t know l” and “person wants to be a troll”.

  • @modernangel@sh.itjust.works
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    1111 days ago

    Since the odds are so slim of tariffs at this scale further boosting an economy that was already pretty vigorous - I think the more important question is, who are you going to scapegoat when tariffs don’t work as advertised? Immigration? George Soros? Biden? Deep State? Panama and Greenland? Her emails? Will you swallow the doublethink when Murdoch and Bezos’s fake news tell you a recession is really sort of a boom, and vodka rations are up 8%?

  • @HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world
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    811 days ago

    How in depth would you like to understand the level to which across the board tariffs from the united states are going to fuck not just the united states economy but the global economy? Education at this level is not free.

  • T Jedi
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    1611 days ago

    The same way they’ll react if someone is right about the Earth being flat.