> If the tariffs remained in effect for three decades, or more, there may have been incentive to move manufacturing back to the US;

I don't understand why people take this as a given.

Tariffs are a two-way street. What incentive does a company have to move a billion dollar facility to the USA when it will face reciprocal tariffs on any exported goods from the USA?

The calculus is pretty complicated. Economies of scale become a factor - is one large global factory more efficient than separate regional facilities? Also income disparities; Americans can more afford to pay a 25% premium on a good than most of the rest of the world can; so maybe you just make Americans pay more. Or, maybe you do both, have a world-wide facility and a American facility, but still charge Americans the tariff premium, and pocket the 25% as profit instead (steel producers model; also pickup trucks); this works well in conjunction with the USA's low business taxes.

Then there's "hacks" like shipping goods to a country that has lower tariffs with the USA, then using cheap local labor to do the bare minimum to have the goods considered to be produced there. There are some obvious good choices here, supposing the country's leadership is willing to play ball into the ninth inning.

So it's not a given that that long-term effects are increased domestic production. It's just as likely to be a siphon of prosperity and a impediment to wealth generation since it will be hard to start companies in the USA that export products.

Wait 3.5 years? Look at the situation with Canada, you might just need to wait 3.5 days when he changes his mind and reverses the tariffs for some reason. The uncertainty must drive manufacturers nuts.

> If the tariffs remained in effect for three decades, or more, there may have been incentive to move

In 3 decades, the US won't be the biggest market for most products - sooner if the harebrained economic decisions somehow persist.

Capital knows no borders, and American companies will "do the needful" to maximize profits wherever they may be found.

Even if we did keep the tariffs long enough to reshore there's so many problems:

1) The resulting industries are only viable under the tariff regime so we have to keep it forever or until the production costs somehow equalize.

2) Who's going to work all these new jobs with the plan of reducing immigration drastically or practically eliminating it? We're only at 4.1% unemployment today. Are we supposed to baby boom our way to enough workers? While costs are jacked through the roof due to the tariffs?

The US has a very high standard of living as a whole. In order for it to compete with others, it must become "as poor" as others. You simply can't undermine your trading partners and not disrupt your privilege as the global reserve status.

I think there's going to be a major reallocation of corporate contributions over to the other party so they can fix this in less than two years via impeachment.

"incentive to move manufacturing back to the US"

Only for the internal market. America will never again manufacture steel or cars for the rest of the world. The days of America being the factory of the world (which really only lasted a few decades) are forever gone.

> If the tariffs remained in effect for three decades, or more, there may have been incentive to move manufacturing back to the US;

That's the European Union, with no tariffs within the EU, moderately high tariffs at the EU border, and few policy shocks. The EU plugs along, with somewhat protected industries, moderately high prices, good quality, and some export business.

Leaders from both parties in US government agree that global trade needs to be rebalanced behind closed doors; I have videos of Pelosi and Schumer supporting tariffs to balance trade deficits with China specifically. For all of the talk about “reserve currency” it doesn’t really seem like sitting back and doing nothing will prevent global trade in RMB, euro, or some BRICS currency, which is increasing every year. So if we’re going to get to that state eventually anyways, might as well start preparing for it now.

For all of the whining about the previous tariffs from the first Trump term, or the TCJA, neither were repealed when democrats had the opportunity, although there were small adjustments. That should really tell you all that you need to know.

It turns out that manufacturing jobs are better for supporting a family than service jobs, hollowing out our economy so there are far less good paying manufacturing jobs turned out to be a huge mistake, originally pushed by CFR, Cato, Brookings, etc. so the only people who are doing well are the rich, because the benefits of global trade accrue almost exclusively to them (although many CPI advocates will make the argument that you’re better off now because you can own a nice cell phone even though you can’t own a house)

The public BSing goes the other way too of course. Imagine getting worked up over classified stuff on a private email server and then letting your cabinet use signal and Gmail.

Even if tariffs remained for decades reciprocal tariffs mean that no matter where you're located you pay a penalty when you buy manufacturing inputs and when you sell outputs.