alt Hacker NewsForgive me my ignorance, but: parts from which cars are assembled (or raw materials from which parts are manufactured), are also subject to tariffs, aren't they? So the only shift that would happen is that of the labour (and US labour is not the cheapest, IIRC).
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carlosjobim • 04/03/2025
For manufacturing physical goods, labour cost is a small percentage of the total cost of the good. Why is this? Because modern labourers are extremely productive: they are highly skilled at their jobs and use very efficient tools and machines to do their jobs.
They would in the current scenario, yes, but the OP said “Two typical scenarios that we know from the past in industries like cars for example”
In the past, countries would put tariffs on importing cars, but not on importing car parts (with some complex definition of what constitutes a car and a car part. IIRC, there once was a loophole where one imported a car and converted it into a van by removing back seats to avoid a tax on importing vans)