Subject: Re: I must need to drink more Kool-aid
That depends on if you think the trajectory the US was on was a sustainable one or not. You evidently believe that we were on a fine path but even Joe Biden didn't think so - hence the CHIPS act.

You're going to rejoinder that "Biden's way was a far better way to encourage onshoring of critical manufacturing" and you'd be 100% right if the US was on more sound fiscal footing.

Again, there is a fundamental difference between: i) there being a possible need to have targeted industrial policy to encourage onshoring of manufacturing of very specific, and certainly very limited, strategically important industries; and ii) there being a need for a broad-based reduction of bilateral trade deficits across the board. The former might be valuable in limited ways (though no country on earth can be completely self-sufficient in all strategic areas and it's probably neither a feasible or desirable goal to try). The latter is just a foolish idea based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what trade deficits actually are.

The U.S. is on pretty sound financial footing, at least as far as international trade and current account balances go. It doesn't make us weaker that we get a lot of our consumer goods like apparel and footwear from Cambodia and Vietnam, rather than trying to do it ourselves - it makes us stronger, because it allows us to devote more of our resources into high-value things rather than spending more on those basics. There was nothing wrong with the policy of identifying a few key industries where re-shoring might confer some strategic value, while refraining from disrupting the entire global economic order.

That's why Trump's tariff plan is so horrific and ill-conceived. It's not just how he's going about it - what he's trying to do is bad policy and will only impoversh, isolate, and weaken the U.S. Of course, the how is terrible also....