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Comment by PaulKeeble | Hacker News Reader

Had tariffs been applied early when American corporations stated offshoring manufacturing to increase their profits the industry base might have been saved. But now these tariffs are just going to introduce pain to people in substantial price hikes and no company in this chaotic environment is going to put the collective trillions of dollars to building capability back in the USA. This requires a better plan.

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I wonder whether you realize that the US is currently second in manufacturing capacity and far ahead of the country (Japan) in third place. (I'm not defending Trump's tariffs.)

The situation in electronics manufacturing specifically I will concede is concerning.

Is that a per capita metric, or overall? America is fuckin huge.

Overall.

Energy costs (particularly natural gas prices) are much lower in the US than in the other manufacturing powerhouses, and some manufacturing is very energy-intensive.

That's a goofy argument because manufacturing did not start to be offshored until AFTER tariffs were removed.

Chart: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ad/Average_...

Eh, doesn't that chart support their argument?

Domestic manufacturing decreasing as tariffs decrease implies that increasing tariffs would increase domestic manufacturing. With their argument being that you needed to do it 50 years ago when the shift started because if you do it now it's really painful.

> if you do it now it's really painful.

That's a misnomer if ever there was one. The current batch of tariffs will destroy enough American wealth to nosedive the economy before any long-term change. Manufacturing is not coming back, there's just not gonna be enough wealth in the US to warrant it. Plus there are counter-tariffs, so if you make it in America, you can't reliably export it.

The pain increases with time, but we don't have a time machine so what is the alternative?

the current strategy seems to be the equivalent of taking a chainsaw to someone's chest and calling it heart surgery. I don't know how to do a heart transplant, but I know the tools require some amount of subtlety.

This. There's always two ways to do things: the right way and the wrong way. And they chose the wrong way.

This isn't 1971 where Nixon could tell the world "suck it. our dollar, your problem" because America was the sole hegemon.

Today, there is a rival player. China. Its a completely different game.

Invest in economic zones. Enforce the usage of the investment into infrastructure and not stock buybacks. Rebuild industry. Then establish tariffs to cement it.

Correct, however that doesn't mean that bringing tariffs back will have any immediate impact to reverse this change. 2025 is not 1980.

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