[mike_d]

> * Drill for oil, lower the price of gas, prices at the store come down.

Strategically and economically stupid. Buy oil when everyone has it, sell oil when everyone else has ran out.

> * Stop the wars that make for unstable access for gas.

The US military is the largest socialist jobs program in the world and is the single greatest creator of skilled labor for our economy.

> * Change the tariff structure so that American goods are worth something against Chinese imports that raises the value of the dollar which lowers the cost of goods

Lets say you make widgets for $9 and sell them to me for $10 (a healthy 10% profit). The government comes along and tells you there is a $2 tariff on widgets. Are you going to sell me widgets at $8 (a $1 loss) or raise the price to $12? Tariffs are a tax on goods paid by the buyer and a way to de-incentivize overseas production. But here is the problem - do you want to make 39 cents an hour sewing soccer balls or do you want to pay 10x for that soccer ball so that an American can have a livable wage doing the sewing for you?

The "American Dream" is exploitation of cheap overseas labor because of our superior economic position. Regardless of how you feel about that morally, Trump's economic plan is to try and figure out how to on-shore the lowest paid factory jobs.

[TheCycoONE]

> The US military is the largest socialist jobs program in the world and is the single greatest creator of skilled labor for our economy.

This sounds an awful lot like the broken window fallacy. Wars are destructive and any amount spent on that destruction is lost from the economy no matter how many people you hire in the process. Surely funding schools would be a more direct way of creating skilled labour.

[throwaway48476]

What about the microwave oven and the thousands of other products the military has indirectly created?

[hirako2000]

It isn't military that's in question. It's their engagements.

The U.S defense budget would be a fraction of its budget if used for defense.

There is an upside in wining wars. But since the U.S has been losing them, it's funding jobs that provide no value. Would better be spent elsewhere.

The Japanese unique economic boom after WWII was mostly due to having little to know defense budget. Germany's was less impressive but also benefited from focusing on the economic performance.

[BobbyJo]

> Trump's economic plan is to try and figure out how to on-shore the lowest paid factory jobs.

Not necessarily. Tariffs are a limited tax, in this case maxing out at 100%. Making soccer balls from China cost twice as much is not going to bridge the gap between viable and non-viable for onshore production. It really only bridges the gap where the off vs on shore savings are much closer, which tends to apply to more complex manufacturing processes, which incorporate more automation in the process, as cost gaps between developed and undeveloped countries tend to be greatest in the cost of labor. Automation is often cheaper in more developed countries, in fact.

Onshoring those kinds of jobs/infrastructure would provide a range of national security and economic benefits.

I genuinely don't understand how tariffs have become so poorly understood and divisive. Every argument about them I see framed seems either highly biased or pure misinformation, from both sides. They are not free tax money, but they also can have benefits for low and middle class people.

[bagels]

1/2 of the claimed benefits are just lies: China isn't going to be paying the tariffs, but maybe it will spark some limited increase in US manufacturing. The thing it will do is increase prices (inflation).

[BobbyJo]

Of course, the increase in manufacturing will be limited. Is there a policy that can increase it without limit?

I also think its disingenuous to call tariff induced price increases inflation. That's like calling a sales tax inflation. Maybe its technically correct, maybe not, but if your going to apply it here, make sure you are also applying it to carbon/gas taxes, environmental regulations (they also increase costs), and capital gains taxes (they lower asset supply).

[stcroixx]

Agree. Higher prices are a known predictable consequence and could be reversed by removing the tariff. You can't change a policy like that and immediately end inflation, that's an entirely different thing.

[bagels]

Most people don't care why the prices went up, they just want them to not go up. Distinction on definition really doesn't matter.

[BobbyJo]

It does. Inflation is a broad phenomenon, whereas tariffs mostly only affect targeted imported goods. We should all strive to be precise when discussing our opinions and preferences, lest we believe we disagree when we infact do not.