Comment by mindslight | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mindslight | Hacker News Reader

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> Brokerage fees are a business decision

I didn't say they aren't, rather I focused on the higher-level context which seems more relevant.

> the efficacy of tariffs

I'm not arguing against tariffs in general. I'm taking issue with applying them twenty years too late (after entire industries have wholesale moved away), in an arbitrary, capricious, and illegal manner (dubious for encouraging long-term investment), while expecting them to create well-paying domestic jobs - the only ways to compete with Chinese labor prices are creating domestic "lights out" factories (which given the regime's continued rolling out the red carpet for cross-border capital, likely won't even be American owned), or devaluing our currency to turn our country into an impoverished manual-labor work camp of the type that China worked desperately to move beyond.

As I alluded to with my last parenthetical, I expect the main outcome to be further erosion of what domestic industry we have left (eg Amazon [0] is less competitive, but also any last-step value-add manufacturing / productization) in favor of an international just in time supply chain where this new national sales tax is only paid after a consumer has bought the product.

[0] I could see Amazon just moving most operations to customs-bonded warehouses though.

There's an old saying:

The best time to take action was yesterday. The second best time is today.

Tariffs are a long-term economic policy. It will take longer than 365 days to change consumer spending habits and onshore foreign businesses/production and rebuild domestic businesses/production.

Most countries have tariffed US goods for decades. The US tariffs on foreign goods will, over the long term, convince foreign nations to reduce or eliminate their tariffs on US goods (creating a more fair business climate for US businesses), and/or increase domestic production (creating jobs, salaries, taxes, etc).

We can't act like it's just too late to do anything about the lop-sided economic policies of decades-past, and we can't act like changing those policies today is nothing but doom. There will be a restructuring - a period of time to adjust - and then things will be fine over the long term. It just takes time and the political will-power to do so.

So then,

The best time to close the barn door was before the horses ran off. The second best time is today.

Does this make sense? Especially as a plan for getting the horses back?

Markets are not computationally smooth, rather they have structure. China recognized this, which is why they've been using government policy to keep their prices low to make industries get over the activation energy of moving there. Now that those industries are there, the structure then gives China leverage which "we" (ie our leadership class) are only now waking up to. Adding some tariff friction that would have kept industry here is nowhere near the level of incentive required to bring industry back.

> We can't act like it's just too late to do anything about the lop-sided economic policies of decades-past

I'm not. There is another comment of mine in this thread pointing out how Americans have been getting fleeced for decades by not spending the proceeds of having the world reserve currency on mitigating the problems of having the world reserve currency. What I am saying is that tariffs, especially as being championed right now, are more like hopium rather than actually confronting the problem.

> we can't act like changing those policies today is nothing but

The doom part comes from having an incompetent dictator-wannabe President who is at best applying a cookie-cutter approach that is decades out of date, but more seemingly just using these levers as threats to personally enrich himself as our country burns. Which is why he is also using tariffs against longstanding allies, thus prompting them to revisit why they are harming their own economies by tariffing China.

> the political will-power to do so.

What I see is the political willpower on this topic (and other longstanding problems) being abused to not actually address those problems, but rather just to facilitate the next con job on the American people.

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