[bigyabai]

Tariffs don't rebuild manufacturing capacity. All US citizens participate in a free market, as long as foreign labor is cheaper then American businesses have no incentive to participate in the economy. This happened when automotive assembly lines left for Mexico, when EUV lithography went to Taiwan, and to hundreds of other postwar industries that cannot support themselves without invasive and overreaching wartime subsidies.

The majority of America's economic value is produced in higher margin white collar jobs in the third sector anyways: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tertiary_sector

Anyone can look at the graph and say for themselves that pivoting to manufacturing would kill the American economy as it has lived since the Reagan administration. It genuinely makes more sense for the US government to pay out-of-pocket for factories like China does, rather than applying tariffs that punish the economy for making smart and profitable decisions.

[throwmeaway222]

> All US citizens participate in a free market, as long as foreign labor is cheaper then American businesses have no incentive to participate in the economy.

You just said it right there, a great argument to make the tariffs match what is required to allow US Citizens to compete with global slave labor prices - OR block all products built with slave labor.

Also have eating out of lead-lined everything in the meantime: https://tamararubin.com/

[bigyabai]

Sounds like a communist planned economy, to me. Why can't Americans vote with their dollar? Nobody should be forced to pay higher prices for everyday goods simply because American businesses are apathetic. It's the economy, stupid.

If we're going to play the "authoritarian economics" card, it makes much more sense to start building what you want now. The game of hot potato trying to make Intel worthy of Apple's business is a waste of American taxpayer dollars that could be going towards a nationalized fab that doesn't suck Satan's ballsack. It's a national embarrassment now that SMIC can beat American-owned fabs on transistor density and yield.