[morsecodist]

Talking about the merits of these tariffs kind of misses the point. The person who wrote this article is very smart. I am sure they are smarter than I am. He has produced a pretty solid analysis of trade policy. But in articles like this people ascribe their own motivations and goals to the tariffs that aren't actually there. Buried in this article is the assumption that the motivation of tariffs and trade policy is to maintain competitiveness with China in manufacturing for both economic and security reasons.

This may be important to the author but it isn't a top priority for the administration. Competitiveness with China and onshoring manufacturing are certainly talking points but they is not stated as the primary motivation for the tariffs. The administration characterizes trade imbalances as countries taking advantage of us. The tariffs are targeted based on trade imbalance. If manufacturing was the goal why apply tariffs to things like raw materials? If competition with China is the goal why apply tariffs to South Korea or Japan, pushing them closer into China's orbit? These are just not the goals of the tariffs and neither their rhetoric or actions suggest that they are.

People have a hard time dealing with values and motivations that are wildly different from their own so they construct all sorts of parallel explanations and defend those instead. But talking about these explanations is non sequitur. It is like the administration adopted a policy of jailing all Capricorns and only Capricorns and people started writing think pieces about how the criminal justice system would be more efficient if they focused on programs to reduce recidivism.

[tonyedgecombe]

It reminds me a lot of Brexit. Politicians in the south of the country were warning that the financial sector (predominantly in London) would loose 100,000 jobs and people in the north were saying "oh, that sounds pretty good".

A few years later when that didn't happen to that extent I remember an interview with someone from a fishing port which lost a lot of business that previously went to Europe. They were complaining that Brexit wasn't hurting the right people and why are prices increasing all the time.

It seems no amount of logic is going to convince some people.

[notahacker]

Tbf the fishing ports were some of the most rational Brexit voters. They were aware that EU fisheries policy quotas seriously impaired their ability to catch fish and believed that leaving the EU meant leaving the quotas behind.

Unfortunately for them, they happened to be completely wrong about this (arguably not unpredictably: the UK MMO was more zealous than most European countries about enforcing catch restrictions) so they didn't lose the quota system but did lose an export market.

[jemmyw]

The EU quotas didn't impair them from catching fish, it allowed them to catch fish. The problem for British fishermen being that the fish people like to eat in the UK are the ones that tend to hang out in other countries waters, and vice versa.

Feels like they were just taking out their rage on the decline of their industry, which is much more to do with British govt policy and business consolidation than the EU policy. The govt has shown time and again that they don't really care, speak words and take the opposite or no action. I can't say I have much sympathy, the fishing industry in most countries seems out to destroy itself with over-fishing and is highly resistant to regulation designed to save it from itself.

[notahacker]

> The EU quotas didn't impair them from catching fish, it allowed them to catch fish.

The quotas were a specific limit on how much they could catch, including in domestic waters. A specific gripe with the inshore fleet was that cod quotas were set so low they could in some cases barely avoid hitting their quota limits very quickly fishing off the UK coast. And cod of course, is something they could actually sell to Brits if they were allowed to catch more of it. Of course, the tradeoff was that larger, longer range vessels wanted to be able to fish in other waters, and fish markets wanted to at least be able to attempt to export what we don't eat, so an agreement with the EU was reached. Now it's not unpredictable this agreement didn't involve dismissing DG Mare's views on sustainable fishing levels or denying foreign vessels reciprocal access to British waters, but I wouldn't call the fishermen's hope for considerably fewer restrictions on what they could catch irrational, especially not compared with some of the other rationales...

[jemmyw]

Yes but there's always going to be a quota and at least with an EU one you can catch fish in EU waters not just your own, which is what I meant by it allowing them to catch fish.

[fragmede]

is it rational that they didn't do their homework to find out that the quota wasnt going to be removed once they'd left the EU?

[notahacker]

I'm not sure it's entirely irrational to fail to predict what the government would eventually settle on, especially when said government was at least feigning interest in getting a better deal for fishermen...

Particularly not compared with some of the other Brexit vote rationales

[jemmyw]

What the fishing industry in the UK wanted out of Brexit was pie in the sky though. It's not like the plan was to saw the British isles off the continent and set sail into the Atlantic, so they still had to deal with the fact of fishing in commercially contested waters.

It seemed like their plan was to be able to do more fishing of the kinds of fish that are available around coastal Britain that aren't popular in the UK and sell them to the Europeans. I say plan, I mean "barely thought out idea". Because the reality is that the ships that do that fishing already exist and already have agreements with the processing businesses, which are already in the EU. And fishing is such a tiny part of the UK economy in comparison to some other countries that access was just traded away.

[lamp_book]

MAGA is just hate doctrine, rooted in propaganda not a functional worldview. And the hate is primarily reserved for the educated professional class - not even the truly wealthy elites.

[h2zizzle]

I'm trying to figure out what you mean. Experts forecast Brexit would hurt the financial sector, Northerners said they were cool with that, the forecast was wrong, Northerners were upset. Nothing about that sounds illogical. Vindictive and short-sighted, sure. But everything follows reasonably.

I say this as someone who's stomach sank when I'd heard that Brexit had passed and that there was a real chance that Donald Trump could be elected.

[tim333]

A lot of voting, Brexit and other stuff, comes mostly to whether people are pissed off with the current situation or not. If pissed off they vote for a change as in Brexit, otherwise not. I'm not sure a lot of the reasoning gets much deeper than that.

I remember asking Brexit voters who said they didn't want EU regulations to name one actual regulation that inconvenienced them and I don't think I got one answer.

[h2zizzle]

That's fine, but "Brexit voters were generally irrational or misinformed" does not change the fact that this particular case features Brexiters who voted cynically for an outcome that they were assured would happen by the very people who were seeking to prevent Brexit, who were then justifiably upset when those predictions didn't come to pass. It's not a good example of the irrationality of Brexit. Maybe of the futility of attempted revenge.

[clodushid]

The primary architect of trumps tariff strategy in his first and second term is Peter Navarro. If you want to understand the tariffs today, just go read one of his many books. His goals are pretty simple:

reindustriaize America

No more free trade

China is evil and the worlds enemy

It should be no surprise to anyone observing trump since he took office that the end goal was always to decouple from China.

[adriand]

> The primary architect of trumps tariff strategy in his first and second term is Peter Navarro.

He's also a complete and utter liar. I happened to come across him speaking on Fox News when he stated that "Canada has been taken over by Mexican cartels". [1] As a Canadian and as someone who isn't living in some bizarre alternate reality, I can assure you that Canada has not been taken over by cartels. The claim is insane. The fact that his interviewer did not challenge him on this insanity is unsurprising yet also insane.

I bring this up first because it made me angry, but secondly because I think it's relevant to this discussion: of course things are going to turn out badly when the architects of policy are either liars, are living in an alternate reality, or both.

1: https://www.mediaite.com/tv/trump-adviser-insists-canada-has...

[grey-area]

Here another example of him lying:

It recently emerged a that he had been inventing quotes in all his books from a certain ‘Ron Vara’ a distinguished but entirely fictional economics professor.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/11/us/politics/navarro-ron-v...

[gman2093]

If this were a goal, the USA would not want to push other countries into China's sphere of influence. The simpler explanation is that non-tariff taxes require congress and are not fully under control of the executive branch. This allows the executive branch to seize the power of the purse.

[freeone3000]

Tariff taxes also require congress. It’s a constitutionally enumerated power of Congress specifically to levy import duties.

[bilbo0s]

Well, I mean, since we threw out the opposition in Congress?

I'm thinking we'd better not rely on Congress to put a stop to anything. A simple veto removes that problem. No way what's left of the opposition in Congress comes up with the votes to override a veto.

[samtp]

I believe the real architect of the strategy is Ron Vara [0]

[0] In case you didn't know Run Vara is a fake economist that Navarro made up in his books and memos to justify his own deeply flawed policies.

[emptyfile]

Tha fact that he just shuffled around the letters of his own name for the fake economist is simply amazing.

Brave new world.

[adamc]

It tells you a lot about him. Honesty is not a defining feature.

[CharlieDigital]

    > It should be no surprise to anyone observing trump since he took office that the end goal was always to decouple from China

Then why are we also slapping tariffs on Taiwan, Canada, Japan, Mexico, EU, RoW?

[9rx]

If we assume what is said is valid (a huge assumption, I know) and ignore the contradictions: They claim that China is able to pass into the US through Canada, Mexico, etc. and that the tariffs there are to put pressure on those governments to also put the squeeze on China in kind.

[CharlieDigital]

Then why did he just lift them on everyone except China?

[9rx]

He said because of the bond market reaction.

[grey-area]

Don’t forget Laos!

[goatlover]

And Lesotho, a country Trump had apparently never heard of.

[mjevans]

We're more likely to 'on shore' with 3D printer like automated fabricators (think next baby step between CnC machines and Replicators).

As far as any mention of jobs? Those are long gone and never coming back.

Trade still makes sense for raw inputs and any outputs though.

[inerte]

And since when the US has a “job availability” problem? Unemployment is low. We have a jobs quality problem. Good pay, good hours, benefits. It doesn’t matter if it’s manufacturing or services.

Somehow some people think their parents had it easier working for a factory, but a lot of blood and sweat went to get that. We can shed blood and sweat to get better barista jobs too. It’s not about where jobs are performed.

[h2zizzle]

Agreed. I'd go so far as to say that the compensation/job quality balance has been out-of-wack for years. It has never been about skill, either, but leverage. And even "unskilled" workers can conjure leverage by creating chokepoints that they can toll, if they're able to organize and hold out.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43604145

[fragmede]

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTjJgfspg/ shows it all too well.

Except that people liked those jobs because they were doable for people who aren't bright enough to write code. If you're not the brightest tool in the toolbox, and not the most professional, and have a criminal record, you still need a job, and the trades are open for business. Amazon warehouses skill level, without the dystopia.

I'm sure I'll do fine, it's my friends who have been underemployed for decades that aren't as bright who don't have a career to speak of that feel helpless and disempowered. Some of them voted for him. I can't say I don't see where they're coming from.

[watwut]

Again, America had low unemployment. And low level blue color job can be aw much dystopia as warehouse - your not bright person with criminal record an no skills will be taken advantage as much.

[fragmede]

What the unemployment numbers, even digging into U4 vs U6, don't account for, is how hard people have to scramble to find those jobs. it's not that they aren't out there, people do still need to pay bills after all, it's that gone are the days when you'd just show up to the union hall and know you'd just be assigned some work. That feeling of solidarity, that you can just rely on the fact that you're needed and necessary and can get a dollar to feed yourself today, whenever you need a dollar. That doesn't show up on unemployment numbers.

Arguably driving for Uber/whatever does that today, but you can't seriously believe that you can build an entire economy off of everyone delivering people and food to the rich.

[sharemywin]

the things that made a factory job good are long gone too. pensions. stable employment. companies that cared about their employees.

[9rx]

Even if we assume manufacturing does bring back high quality jobs: The people still have to leave their low quality jobs they are currently doing to fill those jobs. Which means the American people are going to have to give up something. Which probably means things like their Big Macs, with a return to home cooking like in the heyday of manufacturing.

A win from a health perspective, perhaps, but going back to the age where people didn't do anything other than spend all their free time maintaining their home life probably isn't what people are dreaming of.

[dylan604]

Even Navarro (or is it that other guy who's name refuses to stick in my brain) that admits that the jobs they want to take out of China (screwing in many tiny screws) will not be jobs in the US but automated factories. So it's not a jobs program they are pushing. It's having manufacturing on local soil and less money going offshore. This is not something they mentioned during the campaign, but are saying it now. During the campaign it was all about those manufacturing jobs.

[9rx]

What really stood out to me is that they say the factories will produce their own power on-site, with approvals for power plants happening "faster than we've ever had before", because the grid is "at risk of bombings". Which suggests to me that it not just about having manufacturing local for the sake of it being local or to stop money going offshore, but because it is preparing for war.

[pseudalopex]

> What really stood out to me is that they say the factories will produce their own power on-site, with approvals for power plants happening "faster than we've ever had before", because the grid is "at risk of bombings".

Where can I read about this?

[9rx]

Right here.

[dylan604]

Then they are playing the long con in expecting to not have to vacate at the end of the term as there is no way that enough manufacturing returns to be local with the ability make enough of anything in the time span of this single term

[9rx]

> expecting to not have to vacate at the end of the term

Perhaps that's exactly where the need is foreseen? Such a takeover would assuredly lead to a bout of violent conflict, that very well could lead to all out civil war if not managed well. You wouldn't need the kind of manufacturing required to take on the world, but you'd need a little bit to keep the people at bay. Americans with manufacturing facilities might not be so friendly after that kind of stunt, but if you can make new friends from abroad with facilities on US soil...

[nradov]

3D printing (additive manufacturing) isn't really a differentiating factor one way or the other. It's only economically viable for certain types of parts made in relatively low volume. And the USA doesn't have much of a comparative advantage.

There will never be anything like a "replicator". It's not physically possible.

[hooverd]

Yea, they're not talking about high value manufacturing. They practically want to burn that down; it's all about bringing low value textile production back.

[bryanlarsen]

I think you have cause and effect backwards. Trump pulled in Navarro because Navarro had the plan that Trump's been advocating for since the 80's. IOW, it's Trump's plan that Navarro is actualizing, not a plan that Navarro convinced Trump to make happen.

Trump's first term tariffs happened under Lighthizer, who was much more rational than both Trump & Navarro.

[goatlover]

> China is evil and the worlds enemy

And what is the US under the Trump administration? China didn't start a trade war, accuse every other country of ripping it off, hasn't talked of acquiring Greenland and making Canada it's 51st state, or discuss bombing cartels in Mexico.

[sharemywin]

let's not forget about arguing against due process, prison without trials, weird interpretations of ancient laws, mercurial application of the law. or the free speech threats. the AP, threaten licenses from news orgs, threaten law firms, sue news orgs.

[goatlover]

And today he's signed an executive order to investigate Miles Taylor and Chris Krebs because he doesn't like what they've said about him as president. This is authoritarian playbook stuff.

[anon84873628]

The parent comment is summarizing the viewpoints of one of the delusional people responsible for these policies, not endorsing them. The fact that it is all illogical and hypocritical is precisely the point.

[bregma]

> It is like the administration adopted a policy of jailing all Capricorns and only Capricorns and people started writing think pieces about how the criminal justice system would be more efficient if they focused on programs to reduce recidivism.

I was born on January 19. Should I be concerned?

[intended]

No, Just say January 19th is a leap year.

[jonnat]

Worse than projecting one's values onto a rationalization of the new tariffs is to simply take the administration's rhetoric at face value. That other countries are "taking advantage of us" is just a talking point. We have to look at how the tariffs fit historical conservative programs. Republicans have long wished to replace our progressive income taxation with a flat tax system, but that's simply not achievable, even for Trump. Further decreasing tax rates from high earners and replacing revenue with tariffs to avoid the ballooning of the government debt, for which Trump was heavily criticized during the first term, may be the closest he can get to approximating flat taxation.

[intended]

It’s even better, I was introduced to the term “narrative shopping” today.

> The second order effects are a much more fertile territory for narrative creation. That’s because, as with any other policy, the second order effects of tariffs don’t lend themselves to the same kind of certainty as first order effects. They involve people and how they will respond and act. Any argument in favor of tariffs can only live in the world of second order effects.

https://www.epsilontheory.com/narrative-shopping/

There is no logic here, seeing depth in a shallow pond, is the same as staring at the emperor’s new clothes.

PS> I have seen young voters happy to see Wall Street, elites and older generations feel pain.

[morsecodist]

I don't take their explanation at face value. I think you very well could be right in your analysis here.

It is more interesting to me that actual targeting is based on trade imbalance. They could easily have used the same rhetoric and targeted the tariffs based on something else. I think the way they are targeted is sufficient to rule out a lot of explanations I have seen proposed like I mentioned above. What you are mentioning seems super plausible to me I just can't be sure yet.

[notahacker]

You hit the nail on the head with the targeting. Trump has a long held obsession with tariffs based on an inability to understand that trade isn't a competition where if you buy more stuff you lose.

It's arguments about tariffs as a revenue source replacing other taxes which are ancillary ones thrown out to appeal to other vaguely Republican instincts. Obviously if the US actually wanted to use them as a revenue source they wouldn't set them at punitively high rates likely to simply eliminate trade, frame it as a battle to reduce import dependency or dangle the carrot of trade deals to anyone willing to bend the knee. Not to mention his rapid reverse ferret reframing it as focusing on China

[fastball]

We've always had a flat tax in the form of printing new money -> inflation.

[rqtwteye]

That's my feeling too. The tariffs are just another variation for the plan to replace income tax with sales tax. You could argue tariffs are a little better because in theory they result in more jobs at home.

[giantrobot]

> You could argue tariffs are a little better because in theory they result in more jobs at home.

No serious person would argue this because it's ridiculous. Tariffs on components of finished items don't do anything to help manufacture those items. The only way to increase manufacturing with tariffs is to target them to very specific industries or segments of industries and use the proceeds to subsidize the industries you want to create.

Manufacturing just about anything at scale to make it affordable/desirable requires leveraging a deep efficient supply chain. Everything from raw material harvesting to manufacturing to warehousing to transport. It takes decades and a lot of investment and real estate.

Asinine tariffs won't do any of that. They're effectively just a regressive national sales tax.

[bregma]

Tariffs are also revenue. It just moves the revenue from income taxes, which can affect the rich if they have incompetent accountants, to consumption taxes, which affect predominantly the poors and middle class.

Tariffs are a tax levied on American consumers, not on foreign governments. Using them to decrease income taxes on the rich is something only an out-of-touch millionaire could dream up. Qu'ils mangent de la brioche!

[adamc]

And the effect of consumption taxes is generally to reduce consumption. The economy is likely to shrink a bit as a result of these taxes. It's hard to see how that helps anything.

[throw4847285]

It is considered socially unacceptable to armchair psychoanalyze other people, but I think we can waive that when it comes to the most powerful politician on the planet.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/09/opinion/trump-tariffs-rat...

In some cases, Occam's Razor says, "this person is not acting rationally" and you have to weigh that possibility even if it is uncomfortable. Desire for dominance is common, and is not rational. Why should it surprise us to see it in Trump?

[pnut]

Looking at trump's actions as desire for dominance makes them seem rational, in the sense that they have a common motivation.

From that perspective, he's at least acting consistently, and has been rewarded over his lifetime for it.

Punch people/organisations/nations in the mouth repeatedly until they beg for mercy, then keep pounding them until they forfeit their dignity and pledge allegiance.

Everyone, everywhere, all the time. The weaker the better. Until stopped.

[anon84873628]

The confusing part is that the actions don't seem logically consistent with any of the possible goals.

>The tariffs are targeted based on trade imbalance

Ok, I buy that based on the stupid formula they showed. Is "not ruin everything else" not also part of his goals? Can you explain what I'm missing?

I think people just keep underestimating exactly how stupid and ignorant Trump is. That's why nothing makes sense. He does not understand the law of comparative advantage and thus doesn't understand that trade is the engine of growth. He only sees fixed size pies and win-lose deals, so he's not capable of finding real solutions.

[gizzlon]

> Can you explain what I'm missing?

That goal 1 is to make Trump feel important and to prop up his ego. Goal 2 is probably to dismantle the rule of law and democracy in the US.

[spacemadness]

Thank you. I see these coping strategies everywhere, from sources I would never imagine would try to find reason within the damage these will do. People want to feel like these are rational well thought out choices with experts behind the reasoning and that they must be missing something. Because how could the POTUS willingly cause so much harm to the country? So there is cope instead of coming to terms that this man is single handedly destroying the economy and their future.

[dylan604]

> So there is cope instead of coming to terms that this man is single handedly destroying the economy and their future.

Now I'm imagining new posters in the style of Obama's Hope but with Trump and Cope underneath

[jhanschoo]

Indeed, Paul Krugman has been doing the rounds on podcasts recently and he seems to think that Trump is doing tariffs and trying to eliminate trade imbalances because he has always had that idea of doing tariffs and thought that trade deficits were being taken advantage of, and the talk about a greater strategy are post-hoc rationalizations. Sometimes a simple person has a simple reason divorced from complicated reality.

[pstuart]

Trump thinks he can replace income taxes with tariffs: https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/20/economy/trump-abolish-irs/ind...

Punishing other countries is just a bonus.

[exe34]

> The administration characterizes trade imbalances as countries taking advantage of us.

it seems likely to me that they know their voting base is too dumb to understand, so they make up stuff that sounds good to get the support.

[matwood]

Like how they keep incorrectly characterizing VAT.

[exe34]

It's interesting how they kept changing their excuse for not putting tariffs on Mother Russia, and finally landed on something they thought was plausible.

[lanfeust6]

Broadly that is true of the administration's motives, but as concerns trade with China, they are obviously aware of both the national security and competitiveness angle. Not only did Biden take the lead on that already with the exact above rationale, China is currently more steeply targeted.

[cowpig]

Agree, and I find this totally bizarre.

The Trump administration's power is based in the Russian propaganda machine and xenophobia. Blanket tariffs (except towards Russia and Belarus, not mentioned in Ben Thompson's article of course) are in service of those two power bases.

[kjksf]

US is still sanctioning Russia, meaning there's zero trade between US and Russia. It's illegal for US people and companies to buy from Russia.

That's why there are no tariffs on Russia: there's no trade, there's nothing to tariff.

I don't see how you concluded that US is currently "in service of Russia".

[j4coh]

Are you sure? In 2024, exports of Russian goods to the US totaled $3.27bn, and the US exported $526m worth of goods to Russia. Not a ton, but more than many countries that received tariffs. Or what definition of zero trade are you using?

[cowpig]

> US is still sanctioning Russia, meaning there's zero trade between US and Russia. It's illegal for US people and companies to buy from Russia.

Quoting the Trump administration:

U.S. goods exports to Russia in 2024 were $526.1 million, down 12.3 percent ($73.5 million) from 2023. U.S. goods imports from Russia totaled $3.0 billion in 2024, down 34.2 percent ($1.6 billion) from 2023. [0]

If the same formula were applied to Russia as every other country in the world, the Russian tariff would be above 40% since it's half of (3500-500)/3000 = 85.7%

[0]: https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/europe-middle-east/russia...

[cowpig]

The tariffs undermine US-Europe alliance, and US hegemony. These are core goals of Putin's Russia.

[fanzhang]

Bingo -- analysts of Trump are way too overeager to attribute "4D Chess" super analytics driven goals to Trump.

In reality, he's doing exactly what is on the tin: reducing tariffs, and doing what he wants to do, because he feels like it.