alt Hacker NewsThis is a false dichotomy.
I personally believe that strategic tariffs should be used to protect our national interests, including providing meaningful employment.
This administration has no interest in strategic tariffs. Instead, they are made overbroad (50% on everything from Canada vs, say, cheap imported steel) and they are made and removed capriciously (tariffs on English whisky dropped after King Charles' visit to the White House).
If Trump really wanted to bring your dad's factory job back, he'd specifically target whatever industry he was working in AND ideally spend the tariff money boosting that industry. This is precisely the strategy countries like Japan used to reach first world status.
Instead Trump uses tariffs like a cudgel -- much closer to what the XKCD comic depicts. There is no chance his tariffs will lead to your father's factory ever being reopened, as that would require, at the bare minimum, a tariff that investors know will stay in place for years, as opposed to one that could be lifted with the visit of a charismatic member of nobility.
Replies
Oh, I agree that the way that the tariffs are currently being levied is embarrassing on a national scale. Also on the fact that meaningful economic change won't happen when these tariffs will disappear/re-appear at the drop of a hat.
It's also worth pointing out that while, yes, there is 50% tariff on Canadian goods, this only effects ~5% of imported goods, meaning 95% of the Canadian imports are unaffected by this nonsense.
It's also worth pointing out that some of these tariffs actually are being used to help build out US industry, like the CHIPS act.
I don't think that we disagree on anything here, haha
[...wanted to bring your dad's factory job back, he'd specifically target whatever industry he was working in AND ideally spend the tariff money boosting that industry.]
Which was more or less the intent of the CHIPS and Science Act for the semiconductors industry.