If the tariffs remained in effect for three decades, or more, there may have been incentive to move manufacturing back to the US; however, with the changing of the guard on the regular, most companies are just going to ignore it for 3.5 more years and hope that someone stops this from continuing.
Because, if you think about it, it took decades to get us to where we are today and it'll take decades to reverse, even logistically. This is a bunch of stupidity and meaningless saber rattling that will do nothing but hurt everyone except the extremely wealthy who can afford the additional taxation on the consumer side because the Republicans will further reduce the taxation on the income side.
> If the tariffs remained in effect for three decades, or more, there may have been incentive to move manufacturing back to the US;
I don't understand why people take this as a given.
Tariffs are a two-way street. What incentive does a company have to move a billion dollar facility to the USA when it will face reciprocal tariffs on any exported goods from the USA?
The calculus is pretty complicated. Economies of scale become a factor - is one large global factory more efficient than separate regional facilities? Also income disparities; Americans can more afford to pay a 25% premium on a good than most of the rest of the world can; so maybe you just make Americans pay more. Or, maybe you do both, have a world-wide facility and a American facility, but still charge Americans the tariff premium, and pocket the 25% as profit instead (steel producers model; also pickup trucks); this works well in conjunction with the USA's low business taxes.
Then there's "hacks" like shipping goods to a country that has lower tariffs with the USA, then using cheap local labor to do the bare minimum to have the goods considered to be produced there. There are some obvious good choices here, supposing the country's leadership is willing to play ball into the ninth inning.
So it's not a given that that long-term effects are increased domestic production. It's just as likely to be a siphon of prosperity and a impediment to wealth generation since it will be hard to start companies in the USA that export products.
> The calculus is pretty complicated. Economies of scale become a factor - is one large global factory more efficient than separate regional facilities?
It's not about efficiency. Companies in the US only build and ship their products from the opposite side of the planet because over there they can abuse the local slave labor and pollute the environment in ways that would never be accepted in the US. Even when they could easily afford to by accepting less profit, they aren't going to move production to the US when it means they can't take advantage of those things.
> What incentive does a company have to move a billion dollar facility to the USA when it will face reciprocal tariffs on any exported goods from the USA?
Access to the richest single market in the world ?
> Access to the richest single market in the world ?
How long do they stay the richest single market in the world if rest of the global world are producing and trading at greater efficiency while the US are facing large short term supply disruptions, higher costs and reciprocal trading tariffs on their exports?
If the US is planning on stopping the thing that made them OK in the first place, why do you think they would be OK after?
That’s also before you get into the fact that stopping immigration into the US doesn’t make those people disappear * , they’ll immigrate to other countries or stay home may very well cause some countries with a declining population to stop or reverse that trend
* Not en masse anyways, that’s come later as more of a final solution
Thats why I put "OK" in quotes. It remains to be seen if the immigration moves will kill the 'get out of jail free' card the US and few other countries have had. These trends don't change overnight so we have to wait and see. At this time though their population pyramid is pretty good compared to their rivals. It might take years of continued decline to finally destroy the good thing they had going. Meanwhile China had 20+ years to rectify their problems and now its too late.
It doesn’t remain to be seen, we know the fertility rate for America isn’t high enough to maintain replacement rates without immigration. Here’s one article but you can find many with google https://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2024/3/22/us-de...
The current admin is saying they are going to stop immigration. I don’t find it comforting or plausible if you’re telling me that we have to wait and see because they might fuck up one step of their plan and that’ll make the other steps less painful
How do you think economic turmoil is going to affect the birth rate in the US and how do you justify labelling a birth rate that's been below replacement for 18 years as "OK"?
We're already seeing the effects. Many people don't feel secure enough in their finances, or confident enough in the future they'd be bringing children into to have kids. As far as I can tell things will only get worse long before they even have a chance to get better.
I wonder if the baby boom depends on who wins the war. If people are happy about the outcome, their finances are improving, and they are full of hope for the future it'd be easy to start families. If people aren't happy with the outcome, if they are suffering, if they have to live under more restrictions or a worse economy I doubt as many people will be comfortable bringing children into the world.
Please brother, don't make me imagine a world war with nukes. The whole world is going to collapse, It would take us atleast three century back and it would be the darkest chapter ever.
I think there are some really smart people in the world. We can use them to create beautiful discoveries. Seriously, it sends me shivers thinking of a world war, but it may happen, and I have no control over it. I have to just watch the world wither away.
I'm in that group. The thing is China already crossed that rubicon 20+ years ago. So the US only really needs to outlast China in this regard. It will create problems of its own and pro America people like Peter Zeihan argue that large generations create more large generations. Boomers -> Millenials -> Gen Alpha. I dont fully buy this though.
Their population pyramid looks good though compared to China:
>how do you justify labelling a birth rate that's been below replacement for 18 years as "OK"?
The US being a nation of immigrants has this unique selling point of attracting people to make up for their woes such as birth rate. Unless we see millions of citizens getting deported, the people "voluntarily" relocating don't move the needle in this metric.
I might die on this take.
But you guys really think birth rate is some magic.
India has an overpopulation issue. In India, we literally have more people than jobs.
So you guys could just tap into India.
China is also similar, except it has outgrown its master. So I can understand the mistrust.
But america put tariffs on India as well which is just ... funny.
Also if america really falls into a recession (60% chance, like I mentioned in my other comment), how much do you think the US would be doing "OK"
I think what the US is right now, is failed democracy. I mean, I used to hate my government, but it was because of their political views/ I just felt that a tiny change in the Indian system is needed (like Media , incentives for middle class), I have hope in India. India can truly change if need be.
I don't think quotes are the appropriate modifier to adjust for the damage from draconian and short-sighted immigration policy. Past tense use of the verb is probably more appropriate since countries are issuing do-not-travel warnings against the US (for the first time ever?). This administration is arrogant fools all the way down. I hope the messages sent by the electorate in 2026 and 2028 are loud enough and the brain drain is still reversible.
The point of the quotes was that we wont see the outcome of these decisions until years from now. Which is why today it is still OK but its like the car speeding and then jumping off the cliff. Will it reach the other side or fall to its doom? Too early to tell, we are still watching.
But that only works if you compare the US with other single countries. The EEA is similar to the US, China will be larger than the US, India will be larger than the US. Any of those combine and you loose by a factor of 2, etc
EEA, despite decades of EU efforts, is not a single market. China and India are nowhere near in terms of purchasing power or individual consumption and won't be for decades.
But we don’t have tariff regimes. That what a common market means. It doesn’t mean that you can sell the same product to everyone. It just means that you can move that product everywhere. And even the regulatory regime is overwhelmingly European (that’s why you get manuals in 20 languages)
You don't have tariff regimes within the common market, that's true. You do have tariffs on goods that are imported from any country other than the 24 in the EEA.
The answer to your conjecture is simple Darwinist capitalism.
By whatever mechanism, imports are now more expensive, leading to less demand. Demand for those products actually stays constant, but the demand for imports goes down.
Now we have a niche. If you can produce a good locally for less than the net cost of import, you have an entire continent ready to buy from you.
The reason this has historically gone the other way is labor costs. Factoring the entire global supply chain into your product, it makes much more sense to do the work in a country where work costs less. If the additional cost to import is less than the delta on labor, you've won capitalism or something.
Or, take another angle. If the US can no longer import vital goods, what do you think will happen? Will the goods magically stop being vital? Will we sit on our hands for several decades and wait for the problem to resolve?
Or does the market respond to a need and rearrange itself to provide as profitably as possible?
It seems insanely risky to attempt to fill a niche that only opened up because of these tariffs. If they’re removed, congrats you just spent a bunch of capital to make a factory that is suddenly no longer competitive.
Don't worry, that's the kind of thing that would only happen in a country with a fickle, mercurial government that doesn't value certainty and the rule of law.
>>Or, take another angle. If the US can no longer import vital goods, what do you think will happen? Will the goods magically stop being vital? Will we sit on our hands for several decades and wait for the problem to resolve?
No - consumers will just eat the cost like they did during COVID.
>> Or does the market respond to a need and rearrange itself to provide as profitably as possible?
rearranging itself will mean leaving the status quo, and passing the cost to consumers. Do you think companies are going to jump to spend millions of dollars and 1 year+ to build factories to work around something that might change in 6 months, or even 4 years ?
You are ignoring the 'Optimus' angle. Maybe Elon's stupid robot can actually do something and he has been whispering this into Trump's ear. That would take care of the labor cost issue. Lets see what happens.
EXACTLY! All the excitement over more and more automation means almost no one will have income to buy anything because almost everyone will be unemployed. So what is the use of producing goods and providing services then, even at lower cost? I don't know.
As for UBI, who is going to provide the money? I've never heard anyone talk about how that is supposed to work. YOUR comment is the first time I have ever heard, well, read, that point brought up. The government can't pay for UBI because there will no longer be a tax base of income earners due to lack of income. Companies can only contribute to the extent that they have customers. I suppose that a super-efficient, low labor economy could be almost entirely export-driven but that assumes the rest of the world isn't in the same situation.
I mean we could start taxing the ultra-rich, who have a greater share of the pool of dollars than they have at any point during history. Pick a number, ooh maybe 200% of the median income, something well below the point where you stop being human and become a giant bag of money pretending to be human, anything above that gets taken away by the state and redistributed to everyone. Rip up all the laws that create ways for people to hide money from taxes. The giant bags of money pretending to be people will scream, and try to make this stop; their money can buy a lot of politicians, and perhaps it will only happen if it’s that or the guillotine.
We could also acknowledge that money is a fiction; money is continually created by the banks under the authority of the government, and money can just be destroyed when it’s taxed instead of thinking it has to “balance the federal budget”. “A dollar” is not tied to any physical store of value but we still love to pretend it is. It’s just a fraction of the overall economic worth of the entire US, and entirely too many of those fractions are in the hands of huge bags of money pretending to be people.
Or we could just ditch “money” entirely. Add things like “lodging” and “food” to the Bill of Rights. There’s probably a lot of problems with this! And a lot of them probably rhyme with the problem that some people just really want to become big bags of money pretending to be people!
You think earning twice the median income (for an American, this means weekly earnings of US $2,278) turns people into "giant bags of money" that are no longer human?
I'm scraping by on less than that in an entire month so maybe the number I pulled out of my ass is a little low.
Bezos makes ~8mil an hour according to some quick Internet searches and that sure is way over the "giant bag of money pretending to be human" threshold IMHO. The idiot-in-chief is worth ~$5mil and he sure is way over that threshold too.
Hahahaha. Wait. Are you serious? Elon has been promising all kinds of things AI that are "just around the corner" for at least a decade now. It's always in the next year or two. There is no chance they cracked autonomous robots with those puppet bots they were showing off not long ago.
Look at all the braindead moves this administration has already done and we aren't even 6 months in. Maybe they actually believe his stupid robot can actually solve their problems. All we can do is sit back and see what happens.
>Factoring the entire global supply chain into your product, it makes much more sense to do the work in a country where work costs less. If the additional cost to import is less than the delta on labor, you've won capitalism or something.
Yes, you've won capitalism, but sometimes, profit is a lower priority. Resiliency and the ability to avoid critical supply chain dependencies are important too. We learned that during COVID, when we only had one facility to make baby formula in the U.S., and we had a dire shortage of masks, gloves, etc. because we imported it all from China.
Another aspect of resilience is avoiding long attenuated supply chains, even if it is cheaper...for now. Why? Because there is a finite amount of fossil fuels (necessary in greater amounts for non-domestic maritime and air transit). Also, lower fossil fuel usage due to in-country sourcing would be better for the climate. I realize that the Trump administration isn't concerned about that! But it is true regardless.
I seem to recall the shortage being "dire", but short-lasting. The market adapted and supplied the needed materiel. Is there any evidence or theory showing that a more protectionist system would fare any better?
>The calculus is pretty complicated. Economies of scale become a factor - is one large global factory more efficient than separate regional facilities? Also income disparities; Americans can more afford to pay a 25% premium on a good than most of the rest of the world can; so maybe you just make Americans pay more. Or, maybe you do both, have a world-wide facility and a American facility, but still charge Americans the tariff premium, and pocket the 25% as profit instead (steel producers model; also pickup trucks); this works well in conjunction with the USA's low business taxes.
25% margins are huge. Sounds like that margin is someone else's opportunity....which is exactly what the Administration hopes will happen.
There is an opportunity here: Cozy up to Trump, have him give you a ton of government money and spin up a company that will take those margins.
It is an interesting and somewhat macabre parlor game to play at a large gathering of one’s acquaintances: to speculate who in a showdown would go Nazi. By now, I think I know.
Wait 3.5 years? Look at the situation with Canada, you might just need to wait 3.5 days when he changes his mind and reverses the tariffs for some reason. The uncertainty must drive manufacturers nuts.
> you might just need to wait 3.5 days when he changes his mind and reverses the tariffs for some reason.
That reason will be that he and his pals have already bought up all the stocks that are crashing or the businesses that start failing all at insanely low prices which they can sell off for huge profits once the tariffs are reversed and their value returns to normal.
I think this, more than anything else, has been the real issue ( and I even think there was a recent Marketwatch article that basically said the same thing ): 'erratic decision making process'. There is an argument to be made about the direction of the policy, but the crazy back and forth, where it is not entirely clear 'who/how/why' and so on that people who do have to make decisions about future moves are left guessing. No one likes uncertainty.
Manufacturers operate on a much longer timeline than 3,5 days. But your point is totally valid, about the flip-flopping. One reason might be because Trump is using tariffs as an economic weapon. Once he gets the concessions he wants (I don't know exactly what those are for... e.g. Canada) he then can say, okay, I won't tariff you after all.
Those statements are offered as truism ( and they do sound true enough ),but are they anything more than a hopeful assertion? I won't go into too many details, but I think it is not exactly axiomatic. It may be have been 99% accurate in the post-world war new world order, but, needless to say, that has shifted.
We can argue over whether it is a temporary pit stop or a longer term change that is likely to remain its place, but 'capital knows no borders' has its place along other otherwise useful phrases such as 'bet you bottom dollar that tomorrow there'll be sun'. As in, sure, but it is more of an expression of our wants, not an if/then scenario.
> Those statements are offered as truism ( and they do sound true enough ),but are they anything more than a hopeful assertion?
For the US / Euro, yeah you can just digitally wire say $ 150 million no problem. You just can't physically fly out with a suitcase of $100 bills.
This is not true for something like China [1].
The counter-topic is usually Labor. You very much cannot just go to the US and work but you could from China invest in a US company. So Capital knows no borders while Labor does.
> I won't go into too many details, but I think it is not exactly axiomatic.
The Panama papers, the Double Irish sandwich, and the US government pressuring the EU not to tax American tech companies all say otherwise. More prosaically, the average non-resident, non-American has a much easier time registering a Delaware LLC than attempting to get an American work visa.
> It may be have been 99% accurate in the post-world war new world order, but, needless to say, that has shifted.
Trump has proposed a green-card-inspired "Gold Card" for rich Russians^w investors to skip the immigration queue. Lot's of countries have investor visa with fewer hoops to jump than work visa. I don't see this changing any time soon. If you have the capital, and hint that you're interested in investing $1M+, most countries will roll out the red carpet for you.
> As in, sure, but it is more of an expression of our wants, not an if/then scenario.
To be clear I don't want labor to be more restricted than capital.
<< The Panama papers, the Double Irish sandwich, and the US government pressuring the EU not to tax American tech companies all say otherwise.
It is an interesting argument to make. Given current efforts to reshuffle existing system, those may no longer be available. Let me ask you a hypothetical instead: if those 'ways' are gone, is it automatically a given that new ones will emerge? If yes, why? If no, why?
<< Trump has proposed a green-card-inspired
I don't want to write too much of an obvious comment, but.. how is it different from existing pre-Trump green cards sold to interested parties ( with lower price tag, but I am not asking about the price )? Is the existence of the card proof that capital has no borders or of something else? Is it inherent? I am now genuinely curious about your internal world model.
> Let me ask you a hypothetical instead: if those 'ways' are gone, is it automatically a given that new ones will emerge?
It's important to remember those were not the only ways, they just happened to have be the most effective, and became notorious because of it. Tax havens still exist, and we are still far from taxing corporate in the same stringent ways we tax individuals. The fact that governments only chipped at the edges with no systemic changes is telling.
> I don't want to write too much of an obvious comment, but.. how is it different from existing pre-Trump green cards sold to interested parties
You need to be specific about how green cards are currently sold before I can attempt to explain the difference. Further, if there is no difference IYO, then why is Trump proposing something new?
<< You need to be specific about how green cards are currently sold before I can attempt to explain the difference.
I was personally referring to EB5[1]
<< Further, if there is no difference IYO, then why is Trump proposing something new?
Eh, I have a personal theory, but that one will likely need some time to confirm. The shortest, handwavy way I can offer is politics ( and separation/differentiation from existing EB5 ), but I am open to alternative explanation.
<< It's important to remember those were not the only ways, they just happened to have be the most effective,
True, but I am questioning how much some of this stuff will be increasingly challenging to evade. The fact that beneficial owner version in US was effectively scrapped suggests the AML regimes were getting pretty close to the issues you were referring to. And, as always, conversations within the industry players are discussing more monitoring, more data.. not less.
<< The fact that governments only chipped at the edges with no systemic changes is telling.
That is true, but it does not prove that capital has no borders ( original point of contention ).
> That is true, but it does not prove that capital has no borders ( original point of contention ).
Which is easier to execute: legally investing on a goat project on Mongolia or Djibouti over 2 years vs legally living there for 2 years?
It's self evident that there are far fewer hurdles for capital to transcend national borders than people. I am not certain if your argument is that the existence of minimal friction proves that there are borders for capital. If so, I'll concede that capital crossing market and judicial boundaries will encounter some minor bumps - typically from the country of origin. This heavily contrasts with labor, which faces significantly more resistance, and the resistance is from the destination country/market/juridiction. Would you agree with "Countries bend over backwards for capital inflows, including from individual investors"? It's a mouthful, but perhaps expresses the same sentiment.
<< Would you agree with "Countries bend over backwards for capital inflows, including from individual investors"? It's a mouthful, but perhaps expresses the same sentiment.
I think so. It sounds closer to what seems to be happening. In any event, thank you for this conversation.
Even if we did keep the tariffs long enough to reshore there's so many problems:
1) The resulting industries are only viable under the tariff regime so we have to keep it forever or until the production costs somehow equalize.
2) Who's going to work all these new jobs with the plan of reducing immigration drastically or practically eliminating it? We're only at 4.1% unemployment today. Are we supposed to baby boom our way to enough workers? While costs are jacked through the roof due to the tariffs?
The US has a very high standard of living as a whole. In order for it to compete with others, it must become "as poor" as others. You simply can't undermine your trading partners and not disrupt your privilege as the global reserve status.
Instead of barter, everyone in the world buys and holds YOUR money so that they can trade with others. Everyone else's trade = trade deficit = free money (because you are basically selling your dollars, not a product) that you can spend on stuff.
You are too smart to actually not get this. You call it fake as if money isn't just made up 100% fake 'value units' we all agree to pretend (thus making it real) is real.
It's only one of the key levers of power of the USA. No biggie. You give people money represented by paper but mostly bits/bytes in exchange for other peoples materials and labor. Can you unpack what kind of stuff you're talking about? Are we talking about nascent industries? This stuff, who are you going to sell it to ?
Fake, no not at all. Look around your where live. Think about who, where, and how those things were made. Scam? From whose perspective? There is only one global reserve currency. For all intents and purposes, that is the crown and heavy is the head that wears it. Sure it feels like a scam for anyone outside of the 1% or the political class or the plutocracy.
The world followed the lead and it just wanted reciprocity (exclude the enemies of course).
What seems fake to you and who is getting scammed by who?
I’m saying it seems like a scam when we consume more than we make by giving other countries pieces of paper. Why doesn’t the EU make the world’s reserve currency if that’s so great? Why doesn’t China try to make the Yuan the world’s reserve currency?Why did Angela Merkel cry when Obama tried to get Germany to engage in deficit spending? https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1084075/EU-news-Angela-...
And why do other countries keep doing it if we are the ones getting the better end of the deal?
Read up on 1900s world history and what path dependency is. The dollar is the reserve currency because the USA won the title of world power near the end of the first of half of the 1900s. It was formalized in the Bretton Woods agreement in 1944. The US helped win the war and gained enormous trust and goodwill around the world which it has slowly been squandering since then. POTUS hit the turbo button just a few months ago.
The PRC has strict controls of their money because that is how they can became the factory of the world. They played the hand that were dealt with and battled adversity and they are reaping the rewards.
The president said today that the US trade partners and allies/friends have been taking advantage. You can easily verify if that is true or false. US capitalists moved production overseas to make more money at the expense of the local workers. That's the scam.
I think there's going to be a major reallocation of corporate contributions over to the other party so they can fix this in less than two years via impeachment.
Only for the internal market. America will never again manufacture steel or cars for the rest of the world.
The days of America being the factory of the world (which really only lasted a few decades) are forever gone.
> If the tariffs remained in effect for three decades, or more, there may have been incentive to move manufacturing back to the US;
That's the European Union, with no tariffs within the EU, moderately high tariffs at the EU border, and few policy shocks. The EU plugs along, with somewhat protected industries, moderately high prices, good quality, and some export business.
I've this assertion made here multiple times. The LLM's tell me the average tariff on goods coming into the EU is 2-3%. That's not what I would call "high". The tariffs imposed by the current USA administration start at 10%, and range up to 54% for nation it imports most from (China). Now that's what I would call "high", although if you are going to call 2-3% moderately high then you need a better superlative - perhaps "extreme".
Leaders from both parties in US government agree that global trade needs to be rebalanced behind closed doors; I have videos of Pelosi and Schumer supporting tariffs to balance trade deficits with China specifically. For all of the talk about “reserve currency” it doesn’t really seem like sitting back and doing nothing will prevent global trade in RMB, euro, or some BRICS currency, which is increasing every year. So if we’re going to get to that state eventually anyways, might as well start preparing for it now.
For all of the whining about the previous tariffs from the first Trump term, or the TCJA, neither were repealed when democrats had the opportunity, although there were small adjustments. That should really tell you all that you need to know.
It turns out that manufacturing jobs are better for supporting a family than service jobs, hollowing out our economy so there are far less good paying manufacturing jobs turned out to be a huge mistake, originally pushed by CFR, Cato, Brookings, etc. so the only people who are doing well are the rich, because the benefits of global trade accrue almost exclusively to them (although many CPI advocates will make the argument that you’re better off now because you can own a nice cell phone even though you can’t own a house)
The public BSing goes the other way too of course. Imagine getting worked up over classified stuff on a private email server and then letting your cabinet use signal and Gmail.
I really appreciate you following up with a cordial tone, it's so nice to have a respectful conversation with a stranger on the internet in this day and age.
So, this chart has job numbers and count for the following resource extraction/manufacturing related fields with the following average hourly pay and the number of people employed in that field today:
Manufacturing: $35.16 - 12,746k
Mining and logging: $40.33 - 623k
Construction: $39.24 - 8,313k
Transportation and warehousing: $31.19 - 6,738k
The weighted average of this category is $35.53 per hour.
In general, these jobs can mostly be performed without a college degree.
Contrast that with service jobs that can broadly be performed with a college degree:
Retail trade: $25.18 - 15,595k
Leisure and hospitality: $22.75 - 16,991k
Other services: $32.39 - 6,036k
The average hourly rate for this class of jobs is $25.24.
So, on average, manufacturing and extraction jobs not requiring a college education pay 40% more than service jobs of the same requirements.
I'm not one of those people like the top poster who thinks that everyone can just go get a college degree and become an accountant or a nurse. I think there are a lot of people out there who can follow instructions to work machinery reasonably well, but aren't going to be a great fit for jobs that require a substantial education. These people are the majority - about 62% of US adults are not college educated. We either owe them dignified employment, or in a democracy, we will suffer their wrath.
>I really appreciate you following up with a cordial tone, it's so nice to have a respectful conversation with a stranger on the internet in this day and age.
This feels sarcastic?, but I'll assume it isn't for the sake of the conversation and since that's easy to misinterpret over text
> In general, these jobs can mostly be performed without a college degree.
> Contrast that with service jobs that can broadly be performed with a college degree:
Are these not apple to oranges comparisons? "can mostly be performed without a college degree" and "service jobs that can broadly be performed with a college degree" seem like different buckets.
On top of that "can broadly be performed with a college degree" means nothing. You could describe people in comas as being able to "broadly perform a coma with a college degree". Especially when retail is being pulled up as one of the major buckets.
>So, on average, manufacturing and extraction jobs not requiring a college education pay 40% more than service jobs of the same requirements.
Yea again, this is disingenuous. You're now comparing "manufacturing and extraction jobs not requiring a college education" with "service jobs of the same requirements" but mere sentences ago you were bringing up data on manufacturing jobs that _did not_ need a college degree, and numbers on service jobs that _did_ need a college degree.
I know believe the numbers in this link aren't matching up with this conversation because they are logically inconsistent
Wasn’t my intention but maybe I was laying it on thick.
I misspoke, the service job categories I referenced can be done withOUT a college degree, that probably should have been obvious because it included the categories “retail” (which, as you noted, can be done in a coma) and “hospitality” - but wouldn’t it underscore my point even more if you could make more money in manufacturing without a college degree than the largest sectors of service, with a college degree?
I didn’t include the service categories that require substantial amounts of post-secondary education such as “healthcare” and “financial.”
Anyways now you’re calling me disingenuous so I’m going to disengage. I hope despite a small mistake on my part, you can still see my point. Have a nice life!
Then maybe I am confused but in all the conversations I've been in previously "service job" was almost shorthand for "requires college education". I don't hear people saying we need to get rid of jobs at walmart to bring back manufacturing jobs.
They are talking about getting rid of jobs like journalist, software engineers, accountants, and various other jobs that require college level education as long as its something they associate with some nebulous intelligentsia that they have identified as their enemy
https://x.com/_PeterRyan/status/1907879785151475801
Protectionism is like child rearing. You're trying to protect the young (industry) so they survive to adulthood. The tarrifs are too broad. How the hell are you going to sell goods from HCOL area to the rest of the less affluent world? Even if some countries could afford it, how are you going to get goods across burned bridges?
Even if tariffs remained for decades reciprocal tariffs mean that no matter where you're located you pay a penalty when you buy manufacturing inputs and when you sell outputs.
Because, if you think about it, it took decades to get us to where we are today and it'll take decades to reverse, even logistically. This is a bunch of stupidity and meaningless saber rattling that will do nothing but hurt everyone except the extremely wealthy who can afford the additional taxation on the consumer side because the Republicans will further reduce the taxation on the income side.