Yeah. Specially because the U.S economy is service-focused (and consumption as well).

Like, imagine now that all your computers will be more expensive/worse. This will affect services from like, a law firm - to a tech company. Will make harder for young buy good computers and start to code, etc.

I say this as a Brazilian, to us Brazilians watching, this is like: Why are the U.S repeating the same mistake?

I don't think Americans know this, but here in Brazil, we also have phone, tablet and PC national brands (Positivo¹, Multi², Philco³). National TV brands like Semp, AOC, Mondial. A ton of home appliances brands like Mondial, Philco, Britânia.

But why Americans don't know them? Because they only exists because of the tariffs. So they only exists in Brazil internal market. They are worse than foreign brands, but they exists because it's cheaper to buy a Mondial Kitchen Stand mixer than a Kitchen Aid!

And worse that most of these products are only white-label Chinese products, sold way more expensive than the real chinese ones.

This also create a whole gray market. A lot of people start smuggling products without import tax.

And this only with a 7% average tariff. Not the U.S 29% lol. Brazil with 31%~ prior to the 90's was WAY worse than this. A lot of brands just died when we opened a little the market (Consul, Brastemp, were Brazilian big fridge, Washing machine etc makers, they got bought by Whirlpool in the 90's)

American Brands then will now look for the U.S gov to ask for exceptions too, and this create a lot of corruption. And after you put these tariffs and there's a whole new companies made to internal market, it's almost impossible to remove because of the lobby from these companies (and corruption).

[1] https://loja.meupositivo.com.br/ [2] https://www.multilaser.com.br/ [3] https://www.philco.com.br/

Yeah, but the U.S. govt funds a lot of important research so it may not fall behind technologically unlike India…

Wait, what did you just say? The U.S. government has decimated its research funding?

Oh, well, at least the U.S. has a lot of high quality colleges churning out highly educated Americans, so that still may not be as much of a problem…wait, did you say Americans are increasingly turning away from college due to the high costs and the resultant loans that cannot be terminated even in bankruptcy, because the government has been cutting back significantly on funding education for years now?

Oh well, at least the U.S. is welcoming to immigrants who have founded over 50% of unicorns and usually tend to be the most dynamic and brightest slice of their country’s populations, so it may maintain its technological edge…

Wait what? Oh god.

It's called US companies now could increase their prices by 30% and just don't worry much, if sales are pretty good already for them.

> The Make in India policy of the present government is reminiscent of the pre-1991 inward-looking Indian state.

Have you seen the 70s or the 80s? I was a child during the 1980s when India was a socialist state. There were very few private enterprises, because there was absolutely zero government support. Taxation peaked at 90% during the early 1970s under Indira Gandhi, who also nationalized many of the largest private companies - because private enterprise was seen as a bad thing. It was also impossible to bring in foreign investment, because that would come with profit motives.

Basically, the comparison you're drawing is not really accurate. The current Make in India plan is very similar to the US bringing in strategic manufacturing back into the US; a plan which has had bipartisan support (for example, the CHIPS Act). It incentivizes businesses (including foreign companies) to set up manufacturing units in India. And is quite the opposite of what was happening during India's socialist era.

Isn’t the US the world’s biggest importer?

>It's called Import Substitution. Import Substitution: A Tried and Tested Policy for Failure

Which worked exceptionally well for China, South Korea, Japan and pretty well for Russia and India.

Quite a coincidence, I was reading this LRB essay [1] this morning by British political philosopher and historian Perry Anderson, analysing the last decade of political and economic (lack of) change in the West. He ended with this paragraph, I had to look up "import substitution" and then in this thread about the tariffs I see it mentioned again, there might be similarities with Trump and Getúlio Vargas. Any people more knowledgable in Brazilian economics want to chime in?

>Does that mean that until a coherent set of economic and political ideas, comparable to Keynesian or Hayekian paradigms of old, has taken shape as an alternative way of running contemporary societies, no serious change in the existing mode of production can be expected? Not necessarily. Outside the core zones of capitalism, at least two alterations of great moment occurred without any systematic doctrine imagining or proposing them in advance. One was the transformation of Brazil with the revolution that brought Getúlio Vargas to power in 1930, when the coffee exports on which its economy relied collapsed in the Slump and recovery was pragmatically stumbled on by import substitution, without the benefit of any advocacy in advance.

[1] https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n06/perry-anderson/regim...