| > Germany and Japan haven't focused super heavily on achieving a trade deficit They have. For Germany maximizing their trade surplus was one of their primary goals for many decades. Amongst other things that’s why they accepted the Euro (easier than devaluing DM). > As you said, Germany has huge problems with her welfare state I never said that. And Germany specifically has quite low government debt and a very high trade surplus. Yet.. it’s not doing better economically than the US. Welfare hardly has much to do with that.. e.g. US government excluding all private spending spends about the same as Germany as % of GDP on healthcare. Total social spending is not that massively higher either (~23% vs ~28%). > ordering packages of chinesium temu crap Sure, but that’s by and large insignificant. If we look up US imports by category consumer goods don’t really make up that much. Also, I don’t really see how can tariffs do much besides lowering productivity and increasing prices. Like that complete nutjob Lutnick said they want “millions and millions of people in America screwing in little screws to make iPhones”. That just makes no sense, you want to minimize the amount of easily outsourcable low productivity jobs in your country. |