[bsder]

> The business loses employees to Walmart etc. despite the factory having higher pay and significantly better benefits.

I'm SUPER doubtful of this.

When I last bumped into this, the local Amazon warehouse paid more than all the local manufacturing. It wasn't even close.

Local manufacturing got used to being a local monopoly and being able to underpay. Now that they're not a monopoly, all they do is whine and complain.

[kranke155]

The issue is of course there is no market for US made goods at a good salary when other countries were selling their goods in the US market without impediment.

Tariffs were supposed to fix that, but now I don’t know if they are effective at all.

[bsder]

> The issue is of course there is no market for US made goods at a good salary

The Smarter Every Day scrubber demonstrates that is not true: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZTGwcHQfLY

The problem is that the US has systematically destroyed all the ecosystem required to manufacture by outsourcing everything.

Maximally efficient is minimally robust.

[kranke155]

Both issues can be true. A single scrubber is not a good counterpoint to entire industries having left.

However, yes, the US (and the West in general) were uniquely victims of elite betrayal, where the financial and business elites decided it was best for them to outsource manufacturing, while telling the urban mass and politicians that this was "everyone's best interest". The current political and now geopolitical disaster followed.

The financialization of America and the UK in the 1980s was a failure in all respects. Stock buybacks made legal, factories closed, Wall Street as an engine of growth. It was all fiction.

[timeon]

Yes that is usually point of the tariffs. Not this time as they are too broad (include products like coffee) and not stable (announced one day than delayed/dismissed etc.). Point of tariffs that current regime made is to destabilize both domestic and foreign markets.