Why Trump Will Lose His Trade War
paulkrugman.substack.com
paulkrugman.substack.com
Rounding homeless and drug addicts of the street and putting them to work? Maybe. That doesn't exactly speak to quality products other countries will want to buy.
Taking people en masse off of social security and disability? That might make sense from a financial standpoint, but it would be political suicide.
Plenty of labor and resources.
No real borders to patrol/fence, except one with Colombia. An interstate commerce bonanza.
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TPG80boMjY [video][3 mins][humor]
Does the US really have a shortage of people willing to work at factories? Honest question.
That would create a shortage in the labor market in those areas, but we'd find ways to adapt: automation, public transportation, etc. There could be a net gain, where the new manufacturing products produce more net income, and we'd be able to afford better conditions for the remaining Uber drivers etc.
And yeah, maybe some people would avoid becoming homeless drug addicts if they had a reliable manufacturing job available.
Or... not. It seems wildly unlikely that we'll build a whole bunch of factories that depend on a wildly erratic tariff schedule. And even if they do, the circumstances don't seem likely to produce "reliable manufacturing jobs" when those jobs left the US a long time ago precisely because people didn't want to pay for them.
When the rules seem to be changing on a daily/weekly basis, how can a business owner make long-term investments of the scale that would be required to start manufacturing more products in the US?
Stability, even stability with some elements you don't like, is far easier to plan and invest under than instability.
It feels like Trump and his people fundamentally don't understand this. Standing up a factory can take _years_, and depending on what it is it can be a huge capital project with even longer payback periods. It's really hard to imagine _any_ significant capital investment in manufacturing in the US until they stop changing their mind every five minutes.
(It also makes the 90 day pause stuff look, ah, questionable; you're not getting all that much done in 90 days)
It's mob boss shit, but that's nothing new for Trump.
They will come back for tomorrow's lunch money, regardless of what you give them today. There is no permanent payoff. Why should there be? They know you're pliable, they might as well squeeze more out of you.
Edit: Sorry wrong is misleading, he isn't just wrong, he's usually the opposite of right.