Less wage pressure or more unemployed people on the roles. From the government and all the companies that support those people. Like I said. Inflation can’t go down with tariffs unless people stop spending which means a recession.
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True, but you have to start somewhere. The infrastructure bill took a couple of years to get under way. The CHIPS act has taken a couple of years to get underway.
DB2
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Are you pro-tariff, equivalent to a national sales tax?
Please explain your position on this important policy matter.
Returning to the original thread topic, Ukraine.
Here,
is an excellent review of Turkey’s role, both long and short term, in the matter of Russian occupation of Ukrainian Crimea, and also of the critical matter of Crimean and near Crimean natural gas fields.
Fascinating and possibly decisive.
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At this point, yes, but at a lower level than is being thrown around. 5-10%, maybe? We need to encourage the decades-long process of re-industrializing our country, using both sticks and carrots. Similarly, we need to rebuild the capacity to sustain our navy, very crucial to our geopolitics.
DB2
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I think there is (would be?) a lot of agreement with that approach, at least as one portion of a larger policy to keep people working and sharing in economic success.
So you are against the tariffs that trump puts forth at 25 percent, because after all they are not 5-10%. But you are for beating up on our neighbors, who we have negotiated treaties with us, even with this President? I am sorry but I could have understood if he would have tried to negotiate with them and it would have blown up, but to attack them, after already negotiating a new treaty? I can understand why nobody trusts this government or the cult behind the President.
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ripped from today’s headlines
Turkish Defense Ministry spokesman said that Turkey would be willing to join France and the UK and provide peacekeeping troops in Ukraine.
Steve
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Turkey doesn’t like Russia and would have no problem being on their border.
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Seems like the not-great-powers are awakening, discarding left over habits from the long gone bi-polar world.
United in a vision of successfully defending a safe prosperous future not requiring insanely large militaries, the non-Russian nations on the western half of Eurasia are, potentially, extremely powerful, USA or no. NATO may be close to collapsing (!!!???!) or fundamentally reorganizing without the USA as the EU, and etc, are rediscovering themselves historically, well downstream of World Wars and religious massacres…. Gosh and golly gee whiz.
This is a ferociously engaging “real” drama far more intriguing and suspenseful than popular tiktok and youtubed cheese.
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There was a conference yesterday. Predictably, Hungary threw a spanner in the works.
Steve
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Fantasy land. No need to come to the US with hat in hand.
[/quote]
The US has been the largest country-to-country contributor of aid to Ukraine since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. However, the exact amount of aid provided has become the subject of debate, as generally available data tend to bundle together grants, loans, equipment, investments, and other forms of assistance as if it were all on-budget cash funding. This column tracks each weapon system provided to Ukraine, its vintage, and depreciation to come up with the first quantitative economic estimate of the value of US non-debt direct support to Ukraine.
Since Russia’s unilateral annexation of Crimea and undeclared war in Ukraine’s east in 2014, the US has been instrumental in providing Ukraine with training, equipment, and the institutional support needed to survive and develop as a democratic European nation. Since 2022, due to Russia’s brutal and internationally condemned full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the US stepped up its support, which has been critical to the functioning of government, the survival of civil society, and the ability of Ukraine’s military to hold back a much larger enemy. However, the amount of aid provided in value terms is significantly lower than the numbers generally reported (Masters and Merrow 2024, Trebesch et al. 2025).
In a new paper (Fedyk et al. 2025), my co-authors and I assess the economic value of the military aid provided by the US to Ukraine. Instead of more than $60 billion in military assistance (US State Department 2025), the real value amounts to about $18.3 billion. This discrepancy stems from inflated valuations of older weapons stockpiles and other contributing factors.
Our group of 19 research assistants reviewed thousands of procurement contracts to track each weapon system provided by the US to Ukraine, consider the vintage of these weapons, assess their depreciation and failure rates, and assign a depreciated value to the old stock actually provided to Ukraine, rather than the replacement value in new weapons obtained by the US. We also examined the terms of the aid provided, including loans versus grants and support for other countries (e.g. Poland) under the ‘Ukraine aid’ umbrella, to identify specifically grants made by the US to Ukraine.
We also examine direct budget support (non-military aid) from the US to Ukraine, stripping out repayable loans, including specifically grants made by the US to Ukraine, and accounting for US funds that were used to collateralise loans. We also note the extensive terms and conditionality of this aid, which meant that the aid was among the most transparent and audited expenditures, and the Government of Ukraine was never in a position to misappropriate any of the funds.
Our analysis concludes that in three years of full-scale war, the total monetary value of US aid delivered to Ukraine’s government amounts to $50.9 billion, of which $18.3 billion comprises military aid, with the remaining $32.6 billion direct budget support in the form of expense reimbursement through the World Bank and collateral for loans.
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Totally. Plus 20 characters.
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Tariffs are likely the worst way to do that.
A better approach would be tax incentives for re-shoring - the carrot.
Tariffs, as you well know, are a tax on profits and consumers - and using a stick on consumers is not a good way to encourage industrialization.
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If tariffs cause consumer prices to rise and that results in more goid paying manufacturing jobs in the US, is that an acceptable outcome?
That’s classical inflation. The poor and those on fixed income get the major impact. But middle class workers benefit.
TIG talked about that: incentivizing US production by tariffing imports, vs the government subsidizing US production. Tariffs generate government income. Government subsidies increase government spending. Keeping in mind, the objective is to repeal the income tax, they need to increase revenue from other sources, rather than increase spending on “jobs” programs.
Steve
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That’s not how these things work.
There is a LOT of friction (e.g. cost/time) to moving production. A tariff, especially one that has been demonstrated to be rather arbitrary and inconsistent, is unlikely to cause much if any manufacturing to come back to the US.
For one, sometimes the imported product IS STILL CHEAPER than what it would cost us to build it in the US. Or, there is an alternative import that is still cheaper (the tire case below illustrates this - Chinese tariffs simply shifted imports to another country without on-shoring) Clothing and cheap injection mold plastic goods for example. Even a 100% tariff is not likely to have those jobs re-shored.
Two, often US manufactured goods adjust their prices UP to take advantage of the import tax resulting in no benefit for re-shoring.
After the U.S. imposed tariffs on tires imported from China in September 2009, prices increased 3.7 percent in the fourth quarter. Specifically, the PPI for passenger car pneumatic tires climbed 4.3 percent and the index for truck and bus pneumatic tires rose 2.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009. The fourth quarter turnaround in producer prices for tires was quick and consistent.
Even though the tariff rates for imported tires were set to decline in 2010 and 2011, to 30 percent and 25 percent, respectively, prices for tires increased in those years.
Third, tariffs often result in more jobs lost due to higher costs for other industries than are saved. The Bush tariffs on aluminum and steel saved about 10000 jobs but cost an estimated 200,000 jobs in other industries.
An influential analysis on behalf of the Consuming Industries Trade Action Coalition concluded that the Bush steel tariffs cost 200,000 jobs, even though only 197,000 workers were employed in the entire steel-producing industry.
There is a reason why the Rep party used to be anti-tariff and free trade. It was smart economic policy. It was good for consumers. The Rep party is now more protectionist than even the Dem party - which is crazy to me.
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In the first term the guy put tariffs on steel and aluminum. That raised prices on everything from cars to washing machines to pots and pans and baking sheets. Several calculations have been done, most center around the figure of $900,000 in additional cost for each steel job “saved.”
So my question would be “is that an acceptable outcome?”
Of course if you used the carrot, everybody would still be paying (via taxes) rather than through increased prices, but if we ever got back to a graduated income tax then the onus would be on the most wealthy rather than the middle and lower classes (as it is when prices go higher.)
Trump’s steel tariffs cost U.S. consumers $900,000 for every job created, experts say
President Trump has shown little interest in removing the steel and aluminum tariffs he imposed more than a year ago despite growing evidence Americans are paying a hefty price for these tariffs and increasing pressure from Republicans in Congress to remove them.
U.S. consumers and businesses are paying more than $900,000 a year for every job saved or created by Trump steel tariffs, according to calculations by experts at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. The cost is more than 13 times the typical salary of a steelworker, according to Labor Department data, and it is similar to other economists’ estimates that Trump’s tariffs on washing machines are[ costing consumers $815,000 per job created]
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The Milton Friedman model of buying everything from wherever it was cheapest, was great for consumers, except for the ones who worked in a plant that was closed because it could not compete with the cheap imports.
And the GOP of the 1920s was extremely protectionist, as well as isolationist.
Steve
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Yes, but already companies are moving production to the US to avoid tariffs. Honda is moving Civic to Ohio. Apple plans production in the US. Nvidia is looking into contract mfg in Intel plants.
Globalization is out of style. Opinions have changed. Yes it got us inexpensive consumer goods. But it cost us many jobs in manufacturing. No it won’t be like it was but the trend is improving. Tariffs can make a difference.