But it's more than just that. The factories will never be built if industry leaders aren't sure the situation is stable.
No one will invest a billion dollars building factories and setting up supply lines if the tariffs could go away tomorrow. They would lose their investment. The only way they would commit all that money is if they know the tariffs are here to stay.
And if there's one thing we know about Donny it's that he's a fucking idiot. And it's there's two things we know about him it's that he's inconsistent and will bow to flattery. Only his most stubborn followers believe he'll actually stick to things as they are right now, meaning the desire to invest locally will never materialize.
Trump's stated reason for the tariffs (bringing industry back to the US) will never happen under his leadership. The only thing this will cause is pain and poverty for the American people.
Edit: And to prove this, mere hours after typing it the tariffs have been 'paused' for another 90 days. There's no stability. No one would invest that kind of money into building factories in the US only for this to happen... again.
Even if he would keep things stable for the remainder of his term that is still not even close to enough time for the majority of factories to be built, start production and reach profitability and it is extremely unlikely that his successor would keep the tariffs around unchanged too.
I don't really understand the need to bring industry in your own country, if another country does it cheaper.
The only reason I can think of is independence. Limiting others their power over you.
But purely economically? It's a waste of resources.
Who will do these jobs anyways? For what income? What can they learn at these jobs? Why would they waste their own opportunity of living in a wealthy economy just to do a job that someone without education and far lower costs can do?
These jobs are temporarily, the next generation won't do those. Then the factories move again to another poor country.
Which is a good thing. This is how we develop the whole world.
When the whole world is developed, there will be no need for such braindead jobs.
If you need tariffs to get those jobs at your location, you're just being inefficient.
But that's economically. Can't trust other countries until we're all more united. And the current era is not making that look promising.
It’s not just because he’s an idiot. He also said explicitly that the tariffs are part of a negotiation that he will use to get concessions. So he intends to bargain them away which would render any industrial tariff-based investments useless.
Playing the long game bro. Things gonna be so dope in the US in 50 years. We will be an isolated Arian labor economy breathing in pure sulfur and working in factories to produce goods for oligarchs on their yachts.
The historical Arians were a pretty diverse group, much like the early Christian church in general. Arius, the person whose teachings the Arians were named after, was North African, and there were Arians throughout North Africa, the Middle East, and Europe.
Haha, believable except for the part about oligarchs being on yachts.
In 50 years they will be in habitats in orbit or on other planets, free from pesky laws or crumbling climate. The ocean is going to be a stagnant, warm swamp of stinking algae and dead fish.
Which is why, generally, taxing wealth and having the state invest it in supportive infrastructure and subsidising is the preferred option for developed economies that want manufacturing (back).
Sweeping, protectionist tariffs are usually a painful measure of necessity, if you have an economy without any developed industrial or service sectors, where initial investments are basically impossible due there being no taxable wealth and no market incentives, because of global players always being more profitable and cheaper, than any beginning industry that has to go through growth processes and learning experiences. (More selective tariffs or outright import/export bans of course also have their place for a multitude of political reasons, e.g. the EU not wanting a lot of artificially cheap and lower-health-standards US meat)