Participants said that the US having an industrial policy, to re-industrialize the country could be worthwhile. But, an industrial policy has several vectors, including investment in infrastructure, investment in education, investment in research. We aren’t seeing any of that. All we are seeing is steep tariffs, including on things like coffee that are not produced here.
So, what do we have, if not “industrial policy”? Suggested here, before, are A: a focus on “creating jobs” for Proles with no more than Bantu education, while all the invention and engineering is offshored to where it can be done cheaper. and B: using the tariffs to tax more money away from the Proles, so it can be handed to the “JCs” in tax cuts.
I think we know a successful industrial policy requires years—maybe decades—to implement. Govt can encourage it and provide seed money but private investment is needed to make it happen.
I think we know a successful industrial policy requires years—maybe decades—to implement. Govt can encourage it and provide seed money but private investment is needed to make it happen.
As noted before, I don’t have a fundamental problem with a degree of promotion of domestic production. The issue is the precipitate way the tariffs are being implemented, rather than phased in, over a period of years, so manufacturers can adjust. That precipitate implementation makes it look like a money grab.
We have a service sector that will get slaughtered
The evening news ran a piece on homebuilders who have lost half of their tradesmen. They have either been deported, or in hiding, so they won’t be deported.
If the service sector loses half it’s Proles, does it matter if demand for their services falls by 50%?
It’s not just that they’re being announced on Tuesday, rescinded on Friday, and changed again the following Wednesday, it’s that they’re “blanket” tariffs (never mind that many of them make no sense, for instance Brazil, which has a trade surplus with us.)
There are some things you want to protect. It might be Nvidia chips or it might be certain kinds of metallurgies or other things, but we’re laying down 30% boosts on patio furniture and Chinese anime dolls. Are these really things we hope to build into a local industry? It’s frankly idiotic.
I get that there are some things we need to protect for technology’s sake, and there are some things we need to protect to insure domestic industries (battery production, solar panels, automobiles, etc.) but this idea of EVERYTHING is absurd, and the mantra “they’re ripping us off” only means that they’ve figured out a way to produce things better, cheaper, faster - enough so that they can absorb the cost of shipping things thousands of miles and still beat domestic manufacturer prices.
Touched on that in the OP, one of the people in the discussion observed that things like coffee were being tariffed, when there was no US industry to protect, and no prospect of there ever being a large US industry in that sector. Of course the “they’re ripping us off” is a vector of “his” victim mantra, where the US is the victim of every other country, and white USians are victims of non-white people.
Whereby in this particular instance, contemplating the US’ trade surplus with Brazil, the ‚victim‘ is a ‚very good friend‘.
The State Department characterized the restrictions as holding foreign nationals accountable for what it termed “censorship of protected expression in the United States.”
I’m also concerned about “talent drains”
where Harvard University’s incoming students as well as researchers there and across the US are being discriminated against. Restrictions on Visas and similar deterrents for lawful talent can only damage the nation. On the long view we do not want that talent to work against us is denied entry to the US I find it extremely deeply disturbing and offensive where we are at.