Tariffs: Why Is It Fine When Others Use Them, But Not the US?

Yep. Someone can't ever do any good because even if they do they didn't really mean to do it.

A kind of final "toys out of the pram" argument that allows any reasoned debate to be instantly quashed.

It's not the stuff that is causing the problems that they are offering zero tariffs on.

It's more a publicity stunt.

If zero tariffs are great and best for trade, why do the EU not simply offer zero tariffs on everything ?

Trump will reduce cheap Chinese imports that are damaging the environment and causing global warming. Causing global warming is bad. Trump is good.

Reducing reliance on sweatshop labour is also good, but anyone pretending that Trump is doing this sort of thing to help reduce global warming or close sweatshops is on a hiding to nothing.

Tariffs are neither good nor bad but somewhere in between. A way of rebalancing economic systems. Applying higher ones will probably be bad for the US in the short term and good in the long term IMO. One interesting thing to see will be how much of them the Democrats reverse if they manage to get back in at the next election. My prediction ? Zero. Because once Trump has taken the pain implementing them, there will be no sense going back.

The problem is in a world of grey, black and white thinking will only ever take you down a path leading to paradoxes.

For example, Trump is bad. Trump will reduce cheap Chinese imports that are damaging the environment and causing global warming. Causing global warming is bad. Trump is good.

This sort of stuff fries the brains of people with TDS who just generally want to avoid thought beyond the superficial that leads to these paradoxes and hurl insults.

Breaking news!

Donald Trump rejects EU’s proposals for ‘zero for zero’ tariffs deal on cars and industrial goods – Europe live

And apart from Trump now having to try to replicate cheap penguin labour with Americans, he has also put tariffs on things that America can't replicate in any form.

'homeschooled by pigeons'.
😂😂😂

A perfect example of Americans not understanding tariffs is the Trump supporter who said that he was glad iPhones and Samsungs would now get cheaper with tariffs in place.
Someone respectfully asked if he had been'homeschooled by pigeons'. Probably yes, as he would have been understood if schooled by PENGUINS.

At least taxes stay in those countries even if automated.

@EuclidianGeometryFan you make some good points. Usually Temu etc are seen as a negative on threads except when it’s tariffs. But how else would you stop Temu and cheap labour being relied upon by the west for consumption?

And do they get do strong it’s a kind of ‘buy and large’ scenario

He's just going in with a sledgehammer to make changes that sound impressive to his devout followers but are actually wild and detrimental to the US. Wanting to increase US manufacturing and decrease reliance on overseas markets is a good idea, but it takes time and investment to do this without causing a lot of issues as we are seeing now. His calculations are also wild, yet plenty believe that countries actually have these %s as tariffs.

Factories/production can be mostly automated these days, Trump needs someone who is into designing factories that build things to come up with a master plan for mass automation of USA factories.

I wonder who could support that end goal.

More money for Trump and Musky

@Swirlythingy2025 You seem to think that no US tariffs were in place before Trump's announcement but they existed, targetted to protect certain industries eg trucks.

Some economies have a 'comparative advantage' in the production of goods eg Colombia/Brazil and coffee. Tariffs do have a place in countering dumping, or artificially low export prices from government subsidies but it's nuts to just shout 'unfair' and slap random tariffs on countries for historically 'raping' the US. When did Lesotho take advantage of the US?

Trump chose to target goods and not services. Take a guess why.

PS. I'm with the penguins.

It is certainly hard to reproduce sweatshop labour prices in the US. That's why American-made garments are more expensive than ones made in other countries with laxer labour laws.

So either the consumer pays more for the tariff-laden penguin hat, or pays more for the American-made hat. And if they're working in a factory that is attempting to replicate Temu or Shein, then they're not going to be able to afford either.

The only way America can cut say, Taiwan out of the supply chain is to force its own people to accept worse wages and working conditions, to do so.

Not so. The alternative way of cutting e.g. Taiwan out of the US supply chain is to put tariffs on Taiwanese products. So that on the supermarket shelf the Taiwanese and US-made products are side-by-side at the same price, or the US product will actually be cheaper than the Taiwanese.
Then people buy the US products, so US manufacturing gets the sales without any worsening of wages and working conditions.

Where the world has gone wrong in recent decades is to view people primarily as "consumers" not as "workers".

I know there’s a lot of it’s stupid etc but I haven’t seen the long term aim? Is it to increasingly rely on cheap goods and have no production security and lose taxes?

Is it for China / Asia / non west to be irreversibly dominant and with incredibly strong military capability

not blow the world up overnight that’s for sure but it’s boring, isn’t it, being a grown up?

Making small, changes bit by bit, investing in US manufacturing, starting programmes that train US workers in the skills that are lacking now, maybe give them healthcare so they’re fit enough to work. Negotiate with countries one at a time, making agreements that both countries get something out of.
Not insulting other countries leaders on the world stage. BORING!!!!!
much cooler to throw your weight and power around, tell everyone to go fuck themselves, threaten to invade other countries, get all those hits on the socials.

Maybe the US could make their own MAGA hats? But they don't have any penguins to do it.

This is the flaw in your argument.
The US has loads of "penguins", i.e. low-paid or unemployed workers. It is not hard to train people to make goods in factories.
The idea of the tariffs is to bring the jobs in manufacturing back to the US, i.e. to reverse the mass off-shoring of jobs that went on for decades and decimated manufacturing in the US.

Yes, consumers will suffer high prices on imported goods. But if those so-called "consumers" are not actually consuming much because they are unemployed and have no money, it is better for them to have a new job than cheap prices.

That is the theory anyway.

You know this works for Trump and other Obligarchs don't you?

Trump isn't about doing things for the people. Trump is about looking after himself and his mates. He can maintain power by effectively enslaving the desperate.

Struggling to find anything American made I buy.

Maybe some fruit,
I have an Iphone but that says Made in Taiwan and it was 2nd hand anyway

Does the west keep increasing reliance on cheap goods so there’s little production security left, whilst China grows military capability and we hope they don’t use it?

What are the long term options

There's responsibility all round for this but ironically Trump is the only one who is actually doing what he said he would

He might be doing what he said he would but his supporters haven’t worked out yet that there are consequences to these actions.

Wiping trillions off the stock market (there goes their pensions)

Making everything more expensive (for them) I swear some people actually think that the overseas government is going to pay these tariffs

He also said he was going to return immigrants to their country of origin, even those that were born in the US.

So presumably he will be deporting himself and every other US citizen apart from the Native Americans

Trump says a lot of things. The problem is he doesn’t fact check anything and he spit balls ideas that he puts into reality without any thought for the consequences or putting himself in other people’s shoes and what their actions will be faced with this new reality.

If people who don’t have an ounce of critical thinking in their brains are cheering him on then he must be right

Trump is not unpredictable, he has been talking about imposing tariffs for years. All his MAGA rallies were focused on him saying he was going to impose tariffs. His project 2025 detailed how he was going to impose tariffs. Not sure how else he could have made it clearer what his intentions were.

In 2024, Trump denied any knowledge of Project 2025 yet he's actually ticking 'completed' on a lot of the ideas in it.

I agree- but I don't think he has any issues with the concept.

Whether that's accurate or not, Rory Stewart is hardly unbiased after his wife's company lost millions of USAID money which I remember he was quite sore about.

I listen to The Rest is Politics and Rory Stewart did a really good explanation about how this (combined with the end of USAID) was going to screw less wealthy and developed countries who had effectively been told trade not aid and now they can't trade as readily either.