[lukev]

Some Americans may wish the US had better relative industrial capabilities, but that isn't what this is about.

This is a direct effect of electing a president who deeply, firmly believes that having a trade deficit means we're getting "ripped off", and who has succeeded in dismantling most of the checks and balances around this sort of thing.

There's no 4d chess here. Trump has been both serious and literal about tariffs his entire career.

[crazygringo]

Exactly. Core industrial capabilities is what things like Biden's CHIPS act were about. Those are targeted tariffs combined with domestic incentives.

What Trump doing is not that. It's tariffs on everything, without any distinction on whether something is important for our national security or not.

[rayiner]

Those half measures are never going to work, just like navel gazing about “the root causes of illegal immigration” don’t work. You need big hammers to fix big problems.

[croon]

[citation needed]

Every successful tariff that I've read about through history has been:

1) Targeted on a segment.

2) Accompanied by subsidies.

3) A plan for developing competence in the segment through education and training.

Sounds a lot more like the half measure than whatever this is.

You're right in that this is a big hammer though, but that's more often used for tearing things down rather than building.

[collingreen]

It's fun to see people intentionally advocating for the "smash it with a hammer" approach because working with perspective and nuance is apparently ineffective "navel gazing".

I never thought the ~leopards~ hammers would ~eat~ smash MY ~face~ thumb!

[lukev]

Neither of those are "big problems." The US was going gangbusters, from an economic perspective.

[pton_xd]

The stock market was going gangbusters. Inflation and job market have been not so great the past few years.

[jghn]

And what makes you feel that inflation & job market are about to head in a better direction?

[crazygringo]

Exactly. Tariffs are inherently inflationary, and make the economy less efficient which lowers wages, since workers will now be moved to less productive jobs. And unemployment has been low, so this isn't about lowering unemployment either...