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?

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.

'homeschooled by pigeons'.
😂😂😂

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.

Breaking news!

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

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.

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.

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 ?

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 does seem to put people on the side of China/ very cheap production and Temu which is an odd one.

How do you interrupt increasing reliance on that cheap consumption and hollowing out of security and taxes?

We have the WTO, the World Trade Organisation. Countries negotiate on what they would like and what the costs will be. Willing buyers and willing sellers. They sign treaties for several years. There is one covering hundreds of products and transport that covers Canada, USA and Mexico, it has several years to run.
Trump has trashed that and decided to impose edicts.
Who will trust USA again? It is scary to think they do not want to be trusted just feared. As with Al Capone in 1930s.

However, if you look at it from the point of view of the average American (or British 👀) consumer, if they considered the closing of Chinese sweatshops to be a good thing then they wouldn't be buying from Temu or Shein in the first place. Clearly for them, low prices are more important.

And they are certainly not going to get lower prices from these tariffs.

The answer to me is pretty much in the polarised thinking (black and white) described earlier.

We have to moderate systems over time to stop imbalances building up. Unfortunately we are notoriously bad at this, it's pretty much part of human nature as far as I can tell.

We generally build up economic imbalances in systems (bubbles) until the systems can take no more and forced rectification has to take place.

Essentially no one wants to take away the punch bowl while the party is in full swing. It's far easier for politicians to ride the bubble and then to try to manage it when it all goes horribly wrong. You see this time and time again throughout history. There is even a chart, the lifecycle of a bubble which shows the thinking.
We know what is going on, we just don't seem to be able to do anything about it.

Where Trump is unusual is that he is actually taking action in advance of this when he has as far as I can tell little motivation to do so. I can see how on balance other politicians prefer not to do this. It's far easier to ride the bubble and hope it doesn't pop on your watch and kick the problem down the line than it is to proactively do something about it. In this respect Trump seems to be very much an ideologist/conviction politician. But it is very rare in our recent democracies to get one of these. Even Thatcher for example (remember how much her policies were hated at the time) was motivated to enact change through much worse economic conditions than the ones we seen in the US at the moment.

The US unemployment rate is currently just above 4%. That is really low in a long term context - it's averaged just under 6% since WW2. Long term unemployed is about 1.5 million people - for context, there about about 4 million people working in clothing factories in Bangladesh alone. So there is no great army of undeployed "penguins" who will step in to fill these mythical manufacturing jobs in the US.

I saw the offer as a first move towards opening trade negotiations, and not a 'publicity stunt'.
Interesting that the EU is now talking to China on descalating a tariff war scenario. My enemy's enemy is my friend, comes to mind.

Yes I can see why politicians will avoid the issue. But where are we in a couple of decades?

Little production, China and others stronger, less of a chance to reshore production.

Of course it’s hard to look at high reliance on cheap consumption and change that, even if you get the odd thread on Temu being bad, or waste, or off shoring for cheap production, or overconsumption.

We kind of know it but doing something about it is a different thing.

But these factories will need only a few qualified penguins to oversee the machines making the product. The time of factory floors filled with 100’s of people making something is from a past era

I think that Trump is showing his age if this is the idea.

The US needs a much younger president because the one at the moment hasn’t realised it is the 21st century

That's a really funny thing to think!
Which businesses do you think would most suit these islands?
If I were Trump I'd just wait until the businesses set themselves up and then impose a tariff.

So far there has been little or no mention of Trade Unions in USA. They are a weaker force than in Europe but in one or two industries they are powerful. Car manufacturing is one. Having a good factory over in Windsor Ontario has helped Ford Motor Co. I am told that the Windsor was the engine of the Mustang.
Bringing manufacturing back onshore will give power to unions but the point upthread about the changing nature of manufacturing should be remembered.

But surely you’d want taxes on those profits from production. It’s not just jobs but it does mean US can compete more if labour is lower.

Countries particularly need production as AI / automation increases as taxes can’t go o/s even more.

Automation makes it more possible not less as labour costs are higher.

I don't think there is any stopping China becoming a world superpower.

The US can maybe remain the dominant world power for a few decades longer by taking actions similar to the ones Trump is now. But it won't remain like that forever, unless the US goes in for some sort of expansionist policy and starts taking other countries over, which I guess could happen. It all depends whether the US as a whole values individual countries sovereignty more than it values its own #1 global position. It's not entirely clear to me whether it would or not because to date no one has really asked the question (maybe Trump is starting).

I think that there has always been a hope in the West that China would become more democratic as it expands economically but no sign of that to date. We can only hope that when it does become more powerful it behaves in a relatively benign way. Despite the criticism of the US and its policies, it has probably been the most benign superpower the world has ever seen.

Yes I’d agree with this. I don’t automatically think China are not benign but it does seem they are amassing incredibly powerful military strength. They are one of the few with 6th generation fighter jets (US too), AI has been advanced cheaply, I saw a pic of rather terrifying off boarding mega vessels which could de ramp an army pdq. And I’m not sure we’re fully aware of their capability in robotic military.

So maybe they are benign long term, but lack of democracy is an issue. Or maybe they are not and we keep relying on them for cheap goods and blame any politician who diverts from that.

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.

There is no dissonance is accepting both statements. As someone else said, even a broken clock is right twice a day.

How many of those penguins are about to be deported too?

It is not just about the unemployed. It is also about low-paid workers, usually in service jobs, being unable to "consume" because they have no spare money.

What the US needs (and the UK and EU need) are high-quality well-paid unionised jobs with good working conditions, that create the goods the country wants, and that enable the workers to spend.

Henry Ford knew this. He famously set the price of his motor cars so that his own factory workers could afford to buy one.

I buy my jeans from a British company. They are made in Wales by decently paid, highly skilled workers in a unionised work force.

They cost between £210 and £300 a pair.