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

[Swirlythingy2025]

Lots of countries use tariffs to protect their own industries like China, India, even the EU. But when the US does it, especially under someone like Trump, people act like it’s a global crisis. Why?

This is it. We’re reliant on China and Asia for cheaper goods. I read an interesting summary of how many countries are involved in making the iPhone and that Nike don’t bring tax dollars to US despite being ‘American brand’.

It might be too late to disrupt that reliance now. But in a few more decades the west will be comparatively weaker.

Well he wants Greenland, Canada and Gaza so why not go after everything? The man is fucking insane if you ask me....

Also, he didn't include Russia, North Korea or Cuba apparently due to sanctions but there is still US/Russia trade. Could just move all those factories there as that seems an equally big loophole to those poor, hardworking penguins just trying to get their economy up and running...

It’s the speed and extent and the demanding/ threatening that’s causing the problems not the races themselves, which already exist in most countries.
the man’s a moron and anyone living off a pension or trying to is really going to feel this.
he’s THE worst businessman.

But you are talking about a man who brings out a board, a physical board with the list of countries and tariffs like some 1960’s open university lecturer. All it lacked was a wall to hang it on and a pointy stick to point at lines

He might be prolific on X but he needs to realise that his computer can do so much more.

Quite ironic when you see where the red MAGA hats are made🤣🤣🤣

Are we too reliant on China and possibly sleepwalking into a pretty weak position wrt world order?

What does it look like over time, idk if it’s just been too easy to buy stuff cheaply now and regret it later.

Imagine you have penguins in a sweatshop making MAGA hats which they sell to the US. Trump has slapped tariffs on that penguin sweatshop because the penguins aren't buying US cars. But penguins can't drive so they're never going to buy the cars.

So what do the tariffs do? It makes MAGA hats more expensive for the US consumer.
Maybe the US could make their own MAGA hats? But they don't have any penguins to do it.

So either Americans now have no MAGA hats or more expensive MAGA hats. And the penguins still aren't buying US cars. Win!

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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".

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.

@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.

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

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.

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