I know how big our industries here used to be, and it was only 20-30 years ago industries like furniture, textiles and auto parts started moving away from the US. We could bring it back. We have the facilities and the manpower.
But the point is not to re-shore everything, it’s to make trade fair. China has not been fair with us. We have o…
I know how big our industries here used to be, and it was only 20-30 years ago industries like furniture, textiles and auto parts started moving away from the US. We could bring it back. We have the facilities and the manpower.
But the point is not to re-shore everything, it’s to make trade fair. China has not been fair with us. We have other trading partners for these things, if China can’t be a fair trading partner.
How much are you willing to pay for furniture, textiles, and auto-parts? Do you know that the same structural shifts happened in the EU and are now happening in China, which has long ago stopped being the low-wage producer of choice? Of course, we can bring all these back--in the same way we could develop a pine-apple plantation industry in Alaska--but the costs would be enormous, both in price, but also in higher-value production forgone (the workers and capital must come from somewhere). And you may well be accepting much higher prices, but I doubt that that is the case for the US consumer in general.
And fairness? Why not accept that others are harming themselves (via tariffs, non-tariff barriers, industrial policy subsidies) and we can do the things the others still cant do and pay top dollar for (e.g., finance, high-end jet engines, etc)?
Chinese auto parts are known to have a 50+% failure rate brand new out of the box in some categories. Many of the best mechanics on YouTube have the magical secret of ordering real OEM parts from Japan or Germany and those work when repeatedly putting in $10 Chinese specials didn't.
Producers will charge what the market will bear. Just like they do right now.
This is why the corporate interests are crying, because corporations are going to bear the brunt of this. Incidentally, the stock market is also saying this.
If only we could all work in high-end knowledge jobs. I do, but it’s not realistic.
The question is what will the market bear? I guess that fully bringing back US textiles/furniture manufacturing will raise prices by a whole lot (these are labor intensive industries, and even the minimum wage in North and South Caroline is 15 times higher than the average wages in the Bangladesh textile industry, and I doubt that there are many new takers for a hard minimum wage job in states that already have very low employment).
The market (that is the consumer) won't bear these multiple higher prices, and firms will not produce, and the consumer is left with the lower supply they can produce at still much higher prices than if we had not tariffed.
I don't know what corporate "interests" are. Those who are crying are those whose retirement nest egg seems to be cracking and others who can't afford higher prices.
I know how big our industries here used to be, and it was only 20-30 years ago industries like furniture, textiles and auto parts started moving away from the US. We could bring it back. We have the facilities and the manpower.
But the point is not to re-shore everything, it’s to make trade fair. China has not been fair with us. We have other trading partners for these things, if China can’t be a fair trading partner.
How much are you willing to pay for furniture, textiles, and auto-parts? Do you know that the same structural shifts happened in the EU and are now happening in China, which has long ago stopped being the low-wage producer of choice? Of course, we can bring all these back--in the same way we could develop a pine-apple plantation industry in Alaska--but the costs would be enormous, both in price, but also in higher-value production forgone (the workers and capital must come from somewhere). And you may well be accepting much higher prices, but I doubt that that is the case for the US consumer in general.
And fairness? Why not accept that others are harming themselves (via tariffs, non-tariff barriers, industrial policy subsidies) and we can do the things the others still cant do and pay top dollar for (e.g., finance, high-end jet engines, etc)?
Chinese auto parts are known to have a 50+% failure rate brand new out of the box in some categories. Many of the best mechanics on YouTube have the magical secret of ordering real OEM parts from Japan or Germany and those work when repeatedly putting in $10 Chinese specials didn't.
Producers will charge what the market will bear. Just like they do right now.
This is why the corporate interests are crying, because corporations are going to bear the brunt of this. Incidentally, the stock market is also saying this.
If only we could all work in high-end knowledge jobs. I do, but it’s not realistic.
The question is what will the market bear? I guess that fully bringing back US textiles/furniture manufacturing will raise prices by a whole lot (these are labor intensive industries, and even the minimum wage in North and South Caroline is 15 times higher than the average wages in the Bangladesh textile industry, and I doubt that there are many new takers for a hard minimum wage job in states that already have very low employment).
The market (that is the consumer) won't bear these multiple higher prices, and firms will not produce, and the consumer is left with the lower supply they can produce at still much higher prices than if we had not tariffed.
I don't know what corporate "interests" are. Those who are crying are those whose retirement nest egg seems to be cracking and others who can't afford higher prices.