it’s like you believe you can tariff them expecting they won’t do the same. Why do you believe the rest of the world is not going to retaliate and why do you believe America can prosper without the rest of the world?
What’s the point of having a military alliance with countries you puts tariffs on? That’s unfriendly to say the least.
Honestly asking: what other way would anyone suggest to bring back outsourced manufacturing jobs?
I’ve always heard broad public support on both sides of the aisle for bringing back those jobs. Wasn’t that always going to make things more expensive?
Probably with some sort of long term plan instead of randomly turning sweeping tariffs on and off.
Right. The issue is Trump doing it so recklessly.
But a lot of the people arguing against tariffs broadly seem to be telegraphing that they want to keep manufacturing outsourced indefinitely. Which is why I believe a lot of their tariff opposition is falling flat, and they’re not going to succeed in turning Red MAGA against Trump on this.
The thing is, with the way Dems were escalating on multiple war fronts, especially in regards to China, I don’t see how that’s compatible with a slow plan to bring back manufacturing. A short interruption in shipping during Covid brought our economy to its knees. What’s going to happen if neocons get their war for Taiwan?
Yeah this line of reasoning doesn’t really gel with actual reality considering Trump is now talking about repealing the chip Act. He’s not actually trying to bring back Manufacturing. Trump has never cared about that. He doesn’t give a shit about Outsourcing manufacturing jobs and his boss Elon Musk certainly doesn’t.
But the chips act supporters paired it with plans for chip manufacturers visas, which would’ve imported cheap indentured labor from Taiwan. It wasn’t actually going to bring jobs here.
And the government not footing the bill for these companies doesn’t prevent them from paying for their own factories. Especially if tariffs give them little choice.
The extremely well-paid and literally best-on-the-planet chip manufacturers? The highly skilled engineers with years of education and expertise, who continuously outpace the achievements of much larger companies and nations? The ones who work in a narrow field that doesn’t actually matter for jobs reports, because they’re such a small group of experts and the real gain in jobs for the economy would be the labor involved in building the fabs for them?
Calling them “cheap indentured labor” is just casual xenophobia.
Sounds like you have no clue about the abuse endured by H1B recipients in this country.
Or you’re just another bad actor trying to adopt the language of the oppressed to defend their exploitation.
H1B recipients are horribly abused, true. But that’s because they’re used the way capitalism uses everyone it considers replaceable - grind them down and move onto the next. Doesn’t apply to - again - the literally best-on-the-planet engineers. They’re not coding for Xitter, they can walk at any time and find employment and visas elsewhere.
No, they often can’t. That’s one of the worst abuses imposed upon them.
Engineers from Taiwan that have chip design skills? Yes, they can walk at any time.
You’re taking a general case of H1B visa abuse–which is completely valid in broad terms–and applying it to a specialized case where the materials conditions are different.
That seems an expectation formed based on opinion of how things should work, and not in any way a reflection of how US capitalist policy has ever actually worked throughout history.
I’m having a hard time following. How is the trade war going to lead to recovering outsourced jobs? Isn’t it more likely to cause businesses to decrease their US operations?
The reason why jobs are outsourced is so companies can take advantage of cheaper labor and operation costs. Other than sending the us economy into a downward spiral that makes people want to work at slave level wages… Not seeing the connection.
How do you bring back outsourced jobs without a trade war? The capitalists will always prefer them outsourced, and a trade war is the only thing that’ll cut them off from that labor.
That position has a few inaccurate assumptions. The first being that the machines of capitalism, corporate entities, are tied to geographical regions. Today Apple could just move its base of operations to a country. Willing to have it. That isn’t the US. All the company cares about is profit. It doesn’t care about profit while having its base of operations in the United States. If the political climate is too unpredictable and the profits aren’t easily obtainable, they’re going to move to some place where the profits are more easily obtainable.
Another assumption you’re making is that capitalism is the only solution. It really doesn’t make sense addressing this assumption. If you believe one way, my words on the internet aren’t going to make you believe it another way.
But another assumption implied in your thesis is that bringing back jobs is going to fix the problem. This conclusion fails to consider the fundamental nature of capitalism. Capitalism only prevails when there is constant growth of profit and more importantly for your position, growth of the consumer base. The reason why the United States were such successful Capitalists, was because of our booming population Post world war II. You had this constantly increasing stream of consumers that are necessary for the companies to make profit along with a stable and ever-growing manufacturing base. Those conditions don’t currently exist in the United States.
To that end, the countries at an advantage for the next capitalistic explosion are those with huge populations like India and China. So trying to win the international battle of capitalism is a losing proposition for the United States in the foreseeable future.
To your point, I believe Apple’s based in Ireland on paper for tax avoidance purposes. But your statement leaves out any effects of tariffs, or possibly being blocked out of a market altogether. A company can leave, sure, but a country can just as easily retaliate.
For the record, I’m a socialist. I’m not onboard with any of this madness. Just pointing out that there are significant gaps in the capitalist logic here.
The bigger question is “do Americans actually want these jobs?” According to the JOLTS surveys for the last several quarters there’s about 100,000 open manufacturing jobs that are not getting filled, in a labor market sized about 500,000. Simply put, it’s abundantly clear that people don’t want the manufacturong jobs that do exist
I also saw this from the inside when I worked my last job with a company that does contract cleaning services for industrial facilities. Nobody wants to work industrial sanitation, and they end up primarily hiring immigrants and ex-convicts as they’re the only people desperate enough to take these industrial sanitation jobs. And it’s not for lack of pay or benefits, the fact is the nature of the work sucks!
Bring back jobs via tax incentives for being local and cutting tax breaks and bailouts for taking industry outside the US.
Start by taxing the shit out of the CEOs and board of directors, with a mechanism built into the taxation so that any increase in their compensation is entirely offset by an increase in taxes. Then offer incentives to on-shore labor again.
This is the way.
Richard Nixon was great at weaponizing taxes against windfall profits to the benefit of the people. Also, if I recall correctly, this sort of taxation is partly why the US prospered so much from the 40’s to the 60’s.
It’s also a policy we are never going to get back in a post-Citizens United US. The people who wield the levers of power will never allow tax rates to get that high again.
All the more reason to stop voting Democrat and pull the lever for the Green candidate instead.
Greens are controlled opposition. Same for DSA. I like PSL.
I don’t think there is any way to bring back those jobs. You guys are dreaming if you think you can just go back to an economy of the past.
The world has globalized, America can’t just pretend it hasn’t. Sure you can try and bring everything in house but by alienating allies there are lots of things you just can’t get yourselves like many raw materials, and then you need to worry about exporting to actually bring money into your economy not just move it around in circles.
Plus, think about the logistics of that.
Goods produced in the US are categorically more expensive due to infrastructure, cost of living (and therefore wage expectations). If we could wave a magic wand to transplant an effective manufacturing facility from Pakistan and place it in rural Mississippi, hire Americans to do the work, and begin pumping out goods, the price to produce the goods would increase substantially.
Americans wouldn’t be able to afford American made goods, which is true even now. Many Americans try to buy American “when possible”, but cost quickly outweighs patriotism.
Your last paragraph is completely off course and backwards. Americans can’t afford American made goods precisely because of the outsourcing.
We’re proposing the Henry Ford model of paying your workers enough to be able to afford your products.
I agree with your position, but I’m struggling to reconcile that with the western push for war with global superpowers.
The pandemic temporarily crippled our economy with an interruption in shipping from China. How the hell are we planning to survive a hot war with China over Taiwan? They could defeat us without firing a single shot, by just refusing to ship here.
China also doesn’t want to interrupt trade, it benefits them just as much as America, that’s how. They won’t invade Taiwan if there’s a threat of war disrupting trade.
If you isolate the country from China too much then there is no benefit to China not invading. Globalization encourages peace because trade benefits all. Russia is suffering from all their sanctions now, they made a mistake thinking things would be over in a few days and people would get over it. Now they need to grit their teeth and pull through it. No one else wants to be Russia.
But China is much better positioned to outlast us during any interruption in trade for the same reason Russia has survived sanctions. They have the local production capacity and access to vast mineral & resource wealth that we can’t match.
Do they? As much as we like to play it quiet, the US exports a lot of food globally- China gets some $17b worth. Those tend to be perishable, so any hot war would have to be over quickly for China to come outahead, and any protracted war would see them need a new breadbasket eother domestic (reducing the industrial/military work pool), or international (which comes with the same risks they have now over US ties).
Canada isnt a significant threat to US manufacturing, so why the tariffs on Canada?
China would make sense, but Canada? Why?
I haven’t seen any explanation that’s convincing. I think partly it’s a personal vendetta with Trump not appreciating the criticism from Canada of his administration. I think it’s also partly that Trump is fairly isolationist in foreign policy, and there’s a lot influence from the military industrial complex in the upper levels of Canada.
My gut feeling is that this is all connected to capitalists flailing and taking any wild swing they believe will bring back the past glory days, and re-establish a unipolar world with the US at the top. Democrats believe they can do it with another world war, and Republicans believe they can do it with a trade war.
The reality is most of them haven’t really thought things through, and the ones who have are just hoping to delay & kick the can into a future profit quarter to deal with later. Neoliberalism is dead/dying. No matter how much they want it, we can’t go backwards. We’re at a fork in the road, and the options are neo-feudal fascism or socialism.
There is a balance to it. Yes, local manufacturing will make things more expensive. But making more durable goods tends to pay better wages for more people. And let’s be honest here, most people can’t be a doctor or write code. High paying collage degrees are beyond them. Or we can maintain low paying retail jobs for the majority of people.
But the is a balance and it can’t be done over night without causing large amounts of economic pain to many people.
But doesn’t escalating tensions with China require it to be done relatively overnight? Seems like anyone wanting this done more carefully needs to also accept that will require giving up the fight over Taiwan.
Lol. Please expand on this.
He’s out of line, but he’s right.