Subject: Re: One Possible Tariff Endgame
Of course, the major problem with doing that is that we have all sorts of international trade agreements under which nearly all countries have bargained not to do that. Equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome, so to speak - we all agree not to use tariffs to block imports, and whichever countries end up with those industries based on their skills and talents and resources end up with them. There are some exceptions for militarily strategic things, of course....but you don't get to just decide that you'd rather have more textile factories just 'cause. I mean, you can decide that - but then you lose the benefits of the global trade regime that helped make your country so rich in the first place.


Making stuff, having land, labor, capital in one place, an abundance of natural resources and having 2 oceans to keep us out of European head-butting are why we're rich. Oh, those and a system of government that places primacy in the hands of the individual that's willing to work for are why we're rich and successful.

I actually support Free Trade. But you can't Free Trade your way into an economic system where all you do is financial services and software and that's the trajectory the United States has been on for 20 years. At some point you have to make tangible things.

If you want to make sure your capitalist economy ends up with the industries that you want it to end up with, rather than the industries that will result from the application of free market forces carried out by millions of free autonomous people and firms, then the government has to intervene. If you want to make sure your company is making microchips domestically rather than importing them, but it's cheaper to import them, then the government has to intervene.

And DOGE is cutting none of that. Oh, somebody will be along and claim that Elon Fired This One Critical Guy or Elon is Shredding That Critical Department. The truth of the matter is that the government is bloated, is slow, is behind private industry to such a degree that the two can't really communicate because the people in the government literally have no idea a) the speed at which the private sector moves nor b) the tech/issues behind why they do what they do.

Something has to give.

However, that can't happen unless the government is big and strong enough to intervene. There's no magic bullet that avoids it. If you want the government to be able to do things, it has to be able to do things: it has to have the resources, personnel, experience, and capacity to actually shape the economy....if you want the country to end up with outcomes that are different from the free market outcomes. TANSTAAFL - you don't get to have a stripped-down bare-bones government and have the kind of outcomes that require powerful government interventions.

The government is already ~24% of total GDP. How much bigger do you want them to be????

Yeah, and we've had police for decades, but we still have crime. But that doesn't mean we should get rid of the police.

Heh. That's the left wing position, not mine :)

China's been aggressive and resourceful in wooing developing nations because they've been putting in the work, and they've been successful even when we were pushing back on them. Imagine how things are going to be now.

China has been playing the long game.

a) Use peasant labor, lax environmental standards, IP theft and other means to establish themselves as a manufacturing super power
b) Orient the world's supply chains such that everything runs through them
c) Take the money you pull in from insourcing everyone else's manufacturing capacity to buy up the Western world's government debt. Then earn interest from the people you're trying to destroy.
d) Block anyone else's products from your market, while stealing their best tech and using it to build up homegrown capabilities.
e) Take more money and use to buy influence among other nations, signing them up to odious terms along the way.
f) Ruthlessly extract resources and exploit developing nations to extract wealth even more efficiently than the colonial powers did.

That's what Chinese "putting in the work" looks like. They're not nice guys. Never have been. It's not called Panda Face/Dragon Face for nothing.

I noted in this very thread that Europe (like most countries) employs significant protectionism measures in favor of their politically powerful domestic agricultural sectors. As does the United States (hello, tariff-quota protections for sugar!). And the EU and the US have been negotiating for decades over various measures to mutually reduce those tariffs and non-tariff barriers: gradual and slow progress to be sure, and the barriers remain, but progress nonetheless.

LOL. You think it's limited to just that? They've been playing subsidy games with Airbus jets - while simultaneously claiming that tax breaks to Boeing are the same thing and suing us for it at the WTO - for decades.

Which is a thing one can do, but then it is unreasonable to expect that other countries' responses will be to work cooperatively with us.

The Europeans in particular have
a) Happily drawn down their militaries to almost nothing
b) Spent the money they've saved on a social safety net
c) Have bought into every green scam they can and are rapidly destroying their industrial and energy bases.

Looking to Europe for any kind of policy leadership is folly.

Some kind of hard reset is required here.