[User23]

Trump was the first president in my lifetime to even admit gutting our manufacturing base is a problem. Neither Democrats nor establishment Republicans did anything but line up for their shockingly paltry share of the loot while mouthing platitudes about efficiency.

[hedora]

True, but he said he said that simply because Bernie did, and it played well against Hillary in the primaries.

He didn’t do anything that actually slowed the loss of our manufacturing base while president.

[omgwtfbyobbq]

He ended up reversing the steady gain we've had in manufacturing jobs since 2010, albeit indirectly, because he botched the response to covid.

https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES3000000001

[AnthonyMouse]

The argument against his covid response was in not using more aggressive lockdowns. Which is the thing that increases unemployment. You seem to be arguing that more lockdowns, which increase unemployment in the short term, would have reduced unemployment in the short term (i.e. the period measured in that data).

[omgwtfbyobbq]

More aggressive lockdowns initially could have limited the initial spread, and from there reasonable precautions could have been effective. Disparaging mask use is also generally considered to be harmful.

Cutting funding to certain CDC programs may also have been detrimental.

https://fortune.com/2020/02/26/coronavirus-covid-19-cdc-budg...

[stjohnswarts]

His followers hang on his every word. If he had simply said "yes masks are a good thing" 90% of his followers would have preached it from the mountaintops and things could have been much better. Instead we have almost 300K people dead and a lot of those are deceased as a result of his policies.

[AnthonyMouse]

> If he had simply said "yes masks are a good thing" 90% of his followers would have preached it from the mountaintops and things could have been much better.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdgkdLSwh88

[AnthonyMouse]

> More aggressive lockdowns initially could have limited the initial spread, and from there reasonable precautions could have been effective.

This is what Australia did. Except that some of the measures they used may have been unconstitutional in the US, and Australia is an island. The US has 4500 miles of porous borders with other countries.

And covid spreads asymptomatically, so the only way to get to where Australia is now is to get the number of cases down to basically zero. Which you can't do if you get 40 more from Mexico every week.

Notice that Australia is basically the only country that has managed to succeed with this; western Europe is doing little better than the US.

> Cutting funding to certain CDC programs may also have been detrimental.

This is fake news. The budget cuts were proposed (as a starting point for budget negotiations with Congress) but never actually enacted:

https://www.factcheck.org/2020/03/democrats-misleading-coron...

> Disparaging mask use is also generally considered to be harmful.

For that you can thank CNN. They were writing a national story every time Trump would appear on camera without a mask, even if he was giving a speech to a camera with no audience or was in a room with entirely people being covid tested every day. This predictably led to Trump supporters defending him and it becoming a partisan issue.

It also didn't help that the CDC was disparaging mask use early on, ostensibly in order to preserve PPE for medical professionals, which gave everybody plenty of ammunition to fight about it once CNN had made it partisan for no good reason.

[pugz]

Australia being an island has little bearing on this. It's not like the Covid situation in the USA is because of infected people crossing the border illegally: it happened because of legal travel.

Trump's so-called China ban was a farce. It didn't stop USA residents from flying into the USA, it didn't even stop the immediate family of residents from flying to the USA.

Australia closed all travel from China initially and later from everywhere else in the world. There's plenty of room for criticism as they also stopped Australians from returning home, but the results are tough to argue with.

[omgwtfbyobbq]

40 people coming from Mexico is highly unlikely to lead to 230,000 US cases/day.

It may be inaccurate news, but calling it fake is needlessly hyperbolic. The contention isn't that overall funding was cut, it's that certain groups within the CDC saw significant cuts, and those cuts reduced readiness.

https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN21C3N5

Regardless of whether Trump's missteps were politicized, they were still missteps. Doubling down on something after someone calls you out doesn't make them responsible for your actions.

[appleflaxen]

uniform lockdowns that were widely enforced for 2 weeks and then followed by masks, social distancing, and hand washing would have been more effective, and harmed the economy less.

[klipt]

But that will never work if your population thinks even wearing masks is "oppressive"

[cycrutchfield]

If you have a more aggressive lockdown, you can control the disease instead of letting it rage unabated for months. Trump’s covid response has been an unmitigated disaster for businesses.

[AnthonyMouse]

> He didn’t do anything that actually slowed the loss of our manufacturing base while president.

Come on now. Say what you will about the effect of the tax changes on inequality, they're clearly designed to make it more attractive to do business in the US, e.g. lower corporate rates and allowing capital expenditures to be deducted immediately rather than amortized over a period of years. It's hard to argue that tariffs on goods from China don't make it less attractive to buy goods from China.

[jfim]

> It's hard to argue that tariffs on goods from China don't make it less attractive to buy goods from China.

It's true that tariffs will make buying goods from China less appealing, but if you look at the outcome, it's not really a win. Consumers are paying more for the same goods, companies are scrambling to move their production to India and Malaysia, and there's not a significant increase in US manufacturing.

A properly executed initiative to increase US-based manufacturing would address all of the factors necessary to restart manufacturing:

- Not only tax cuts, but subsidies and investment aimed at increasing manufacturing in specific industries

- A concerted program to identify labor and skills shortages, and address them

- A program to identify the missing parts of manufacturing ecosystems and address them. One reason why electronics are made in China is not only cheap labor, but access to a whole ecosystem of suppliers and other manufacturers. Need one million PCBs assembled, plastic casings made, half a million cardboard boxes printed, instruction manuals printed and bound, well, there's a whole ecosystem of partners ready to get all of these things done with the capacity to have a relatively short turnaround time.

- A clear bipartisan commitment that this is something that won't get deprioritized or axed one or two administrations later, but something that is of national interest and that both parties agree to push forward

- A national focus on a key differentiator from other countries' manufacturing. China has cheap, Japan, Switzerland, and Germany have good, the US has big and sturdy maybe?

- Tariffs to protect newly formed manufacturing businesses, but only in conjunction with all of the above

This is what a solid plan for restarting US manufacturing would look like.

[AnthonyMouse]

> It's true that tariffs will make buying goods from China less appealing, but if you look at the outcome, it's not really a win. Consumers are paying more for the same goods, companies are scrambling to move their production to India and Malaysia, and there's not a significant increase in US manufacturing.

If you look at the actual outcome, it was that China devalued their currency or otherwise lowered prices to eat the tariffs, because their nightmare is manufacturing getting a foothold anywhere else, whether it's India or the US. Which is a win for the US because we have China paying us billions of dollars in tariffs without paying significantly higher prices for goods.

That doesn't help US manufacturing directly, but it gives the US a lot of leverage in trade negotiations because now China wants that situation to stop happening. And in the meantime the money can be used for tax cuts or subsidies to US businesses.

We could also just raise the tariffs more, for as long as China decides they want to keep paying them instead of letting them push manufacturing out of China.

> Not only tax cuts, but subsidies and investment aimed at increasing manufacturing in specific industries

Tax cuts and subsidies are equivalent. And it's not clear why targeting specific industries is useful rather than giving the same incentives across all industries.

> A concerted program to identify labor and skills shortages, and address them

Address them how? With more subsidies, which is really just equivalent to tax cuts again? This is the sort of thing markets are better at than governments.

> A program to identify the missing parts of manufacturing ecosystems and address them. One reason why electronics are made in China is not only cheap labor, but access to a whole ecosystem of suppliers and other manufacturers. Need one million PCBs assembled, plastic casings made, half a million cardboard boxes printed, instruction manuals printed and bound, well, there's a whole ecosystem of partners ready to get all of these things done with the capacity to have a relatively short turnaround time.

This is certainly a problem, but it seems to imply the opposite of your other proposed solutions. You would then not want to target specific segments but rather have broad incentives to engage in all different kinds of business activity, i.e. general tax cuts.

> A clear bipartisan commitment that this is something that won't get deprioritized or axed one or two administrations later, but something that is of national interest and that both parties agree to push forward

This seems like something you need Democrats to do rather than something you need Trump to do.

> A national focus on a key differentiator from other countries' manufacturing. China has cheap, Japan, Switzerland, and Germany have good, the US has big and sturdy maybe?

What does this even mean? Countries don't need to differentiate like this. How is it even differentiation when three of the four countries you listed are using the same one?

[oarsinsync]

> If you look at the actual outcome, it was that China devalued their currency or otherwise lowered prices to eat the tariffs, because their nightmare is manufacturing getting a foothold anywhere else, whether it's India or the US. Which is a win for the US because we have China paying us billions of dollars in tariffs without paying significantly higher prices for goods.

Can you tell my suppliers this so they stop passing on 50% of the cost of the tariffs onto me please? They don’t seem to have gotten your memo that the Chinese are paying the tariffs instead of the consumers.

I literally have “import tariffs” as a line item on all my invoices that relate to goods manufactured in China. Every single supplier appears to be colluding to increase their profits, if what you’re saying is true.

The alternative is that tariffs are actually driving up costs unnecessarily.

[jonathannat]

The environment/macro has already changed, and the tariffs are here to stay, even Biden and post-Biden. If you haven't yet adjusted to this, your business is in big trouble as your competitors already have moved from China to other SE countries, and you will most likely fail soon.

As an aside. Most US based businesses have already moved on. It seems that alot of European-run businesses are laggards

[GcVmvNhBsU]

Tariffs don’t really seem to help anyone. Appliances are much more expensive than the last time I bought them in 2015. If we continue to raise tariffs, China will just stop buying corn, soybeans, and pork, and suddenly all of the revenue raised from tariffs are going to bail out farmers in Iowa.

[jfim]

> Tax cuts and subsidies are equivalent.

They're not. One can't cut taxes below zero, for starters. Some industries need more than just having negligible taxes to get started, especially in capital intensive businesses.

Furthermore, the idea that the only lever that the government has to induce people to do things is lowering taxes is completely absurd. Tax cuts didn't build the Hoover dam, the interstate highway system, nor send a man to the Moon.

The government can use targeted investments, messaging, procurement, tax cuts, and so on in order to move people towards certain outcomes.

The day that the US government announces that they'll buy 100 million masks a month for a strategic reserve or replace all of the mobile devices for all federal employees, as long as they're at at most a 50% premium over the cheapest option and are fully traceable from raw materials to finished product as being fully built in the US and allied countries, is the day that people will start investigating if it's possible to do so, and start trying to do so if it's possible.

> This seems like something you need Democrats to do rather than something you need Trump to do.

It takes two to tango. Many other countries are able to pass laws and make progress, even in complex multiparty negotiations during minority governments.

[User23]

> They're not. One can't cut taxes below zero, for starters.

This already exists, it's called a refundable tax credit.

[AnthonyMouse]

> They're not. One can't cut taxes below zero, for starters.

You might want to check with the IRS, since that's exactly what the EITC does. It's also the de facto result when a company takes a tax loss (e.g. from deducting more expenses than it had in revenue, common for startups) and can then sell the tax loss to another company to offset its tax burden.

> Tax cuts didn't build the Hoover dam, the interstate highway system, nor send a man to the Moon.

As opposed to Tesla's plant at Niagara Falls, or the various privately-owned rail networks in the world, or SpaceX?

> The day that the US government announces that they'll buy 100 million masks a month for a strategic reserve or replace all of the mobile devices for all federal employees, as long as they're at at most a 50% premium over the cheapest option and are fully traceable from raw materials to finished product as being fully built in the US and allied countries, is the day that people will start investigating if it's possible to do so, and start trying to do so if it's possible.

But that's actually more expensive, and less productive, than just making it more cost effective to manufacture things domestically than somewhere else, because domestic production has low taxes and efficient regulations and production in countries that engage in currency manipulation or have inadequate environmental protections are subject to tariffs.

> It takes two to tango.

That's the problem. It doesn't matter how willing one side is to negotiate if Democrats are too busy fabricating lies about Russia collusion to come to the table. Compromise requires both sides to be reasonable.

[ggggtez]

> It's hard to argue that tariffs on goods from China don't make it less attractive to buy goods from China.

Disagree. I think this is small minded. So you add a tariff on chinese goods. If they are not the cheapest, then you buy from elsewhere... which still isn't the USA.

And then China does the same thing: retaliating with tariffs, and then buying goods from elsewhere, which isn't the USA either.

So in this game, tariffs probably hurt businesses in both countries.

And, anecdotally: I still buy products from china. More today than 4 years ago. The products for sale on Amazon are often just chinese imports that have been marked up or re-branded. I think it's the exception, rather than the rule, that tariffs did anything positive for someone.

[AnthonyMouse]

> So you add a tariff on chinese goods. If they are not the cheapest, then you buy from elsewhere... which still isn't the USA.

But that's still good. It provides for supply chain diversity even if it isn't in the US. Now you can buy from China and Mexico instead of only China.

Then you get a functional supply chain operating in Mexico, which has geographical proximity to the US and has greater overlap in language and culture, and you're one step closer to manufacturing in Arizona and Texas.

> And then China does the same thing: retaliating with tariffs, and then buying goods from elsewhere, which isn't the USA either.

But the US has a 3:1 trade imbalance with China, so we can use a third of the money to cancel out their tariffs on our stuff. Or threaten to raise ours 33% if they don't stop.

The US has leverage here, but only if they use it.

> And, anecdotally: I still buy products from china.

Manufacturing left the US over the course of 50 years. It isn't going to all come back in less than 5 years. We're talking about long-term here.

[disown]

> True, but he said he said that simply because Bernie did, and it played well against Hillary in the primaries.

To be fair, Trump has been saying that since the 80s... Of course that didn't stop him from manufacturing in china himself. The guy talks the talk but rarely walks the walk.

> He didn’t do anything that actually slowed the loss of our manufacturing base while president.

And that's why he lost. But boy did he make israel safe. How many arab states did he force into recognizing israel? 4 or 5?

Trump's achievements were making israel great again and forcing mexico to extend intellectual property rights by a few years so that he can selling his "Trump" name in mexico for a few more years? Not that things are going to get any better with biden.

But then again, it's naive to think the president hold any true power. The power are held by those behind the scenes. Politicians nowadays are entertainers to keep the populace distracted. Presidents come and go, but the powerful remain.

[EricE]

Oh really? I'm sure it's just a coincidence that after getting repeatedly browbeat Apple dramatically ramped up iPhone production in India and Brazil? That's just one example.

I guess we will know for sure - if they slow or reverse (especially in India) under Beijing Biden that will be confirmation Trump was successful at least at moving manufacturing away from China. It was a start. I don't expect it to continue with the establishment Democrats and Republicans back in charge. Yippie.

[hpkuarg]

> Apple dramatically ramped up iPhone production in India and Brazil

Increased production in India and Brazil don't do anything for the loss of U.S. manufacturing.

[stjohnswarts]

I agree and that was one of the few things I liked about him, but you know it's all BS when he doesn't support unions. Plus everything else about him is just heinous and basically a ruse to just get people to like him and stroke his ego.