[_bin_]

Because tariffs aren’t actually a good thing. If you hurt my producers by $1, I should hurt yours by $1 to maintain some level of credibility in our repeated game. If I don’t punish foreigners for tariffing my guys they have no incentive to reduce or remove those tariffs.

I don’t actually care about t-shirts being made in china. That’s not an industry that matters at all. I do care about china closing her entire market to American tech, for instance.

[d1sxeyes]

If you start looking for justice in the world economy, you've already lost the game. The only thing that matters is money. You can stick tariffs on left, right and centre, and all you'll end up doing is pushing goods out of the hands of your consumers.

You can try to 'hurt' another country's producers, but they're likely to just go and find another market for their goods.

[_bin_]

I'm not really looking for "justice", I'm looking to uphold our interests. I don't particularly care if we raise more revenue than some other country does from our imports. I don't think tariffs are the best or only weapon to fix our problems. I do think they have a place, that selling off more and more of our country via trade deficit is unsustainable, and that our priorities as a nation are beyond screwed up.

[d1sxeyes]

Looking at the stock market, do you believe that tariffs are upholding US interests?