Trump's Big Bet: Americans Will Tolerate Downturn to Restore Manufacturing

Yeah, there's a whole lot of open questions, beyond just is this even what he's trying to do in the first place (which is questionable since he can be known to hide his true intentions).

1. Does he have the time. There's two options for solving the time problem. 1. He has to convince, probably Democrats that this is the right solution. One way to do this would be to get far enough down the path that undoing it seems crazy, either because undoing it is more expensive or undoing it is politically untenebale, but really he has to convince everyone, because he has to convince business that want to make the capitol investment they won't lose cash if trade barriers are lifted in 2-4 years. 2. He does become a dictator(which he would have to live long enough to see this plan to fruition), he goes really harsh on tariffs, and makes the obvious case. But this still may not even work, because he would have to convince businesses making the capitol investment he would live long enough and stay in power long enough for this to all happen. What would that take 10 years? Maybe 20?

2. This has to go basically against market demands which for the most part in the US is cheap cheap cheap. Look at fast food, the rise of fast fashion, are people really by and large bought into the idea "it's ok if things cost more, because it's better for America / People who work in manufacturing get paid more". American's by and large I think are not good at doing things "for the greater good" and we're not in a "do things for the greater good moment"

Also, it'll only meaningfully push down prices if labor prices plummet. Just building more factories won't do it.

Typically, when you see MIUSA items now, they're high-quality, because it doesn't make sense to use expensive labor while cutting lots of corners on process and cheaping out on materials when your finished good will still be expensive, only a little cheaper than making something high-quality, due to labor costs. This holds for most other developed-world manufacturing, too, and is the biggest reason that "made in [name of developed country]" is one of the more reliable high-level signals of quality—simply because it's rarely a good business idea to manufacture poor products at developed-world labor prices.

We can't compete at the lower end of prices & quality without cutting US labor pay rates a whole bunch.

Prices stay down if you pay the worker like Chinese labor. Which would fit what manufacturers desire, Henry Ford is long dead.

The SDGs have Goals, Targets, and Indicators.

What are the goals for domestic manufacturing?

FRED series tagged "Manufacturing" https://fred.stlouisfed.org/tags/series?t=manufacturing

"Manufacturers' New Orders: Total Manufacturing (AMTMNO)" https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AMTMNO

Tariffs only work to protect already existing industries. The asinine way Trump has implemented tariffs, in the hopes of spurring American manufacturing, will never work as intended. To wit, the new manufacturers know all they have to do is be priced slightly below their tariffed competitors' price. This strategy maximizes their profit, which fulfills the business' obligation to their shareholders. But it also sets things up that the tariff can never be repealed without facing a lot of political backlash because of the American jobs that will be lost. The loser in all this is the consumer, who only sees prices go up, quite significantly at that, and will never come back down.

I can't state more emphatically how utterly stupid Trump's tariffs are.