To be clear, the current tariff execution is reckless and poorly planned. But I hear a lot of total tariff opposition from the same people who demand we continue to escalate with China over control of Taiwan, up to a potential hot war.
So what’s the plan? Western economies were brought to their knees during just a momentary interruption in shipping during the pandemic. How do you wage a war with a country that does all of your manufacturing? China could defeat most western countries without firing a single shot, just by cutting off their access to Chinese exports.
If you don’t support tariffs to bring back manufacturing jobs domestically, how do you think we could make it through a war with our manufacturing partners? I can’t reconcile the two ideas, and I don’t understand how some of y’all are.
US manufacturing output is far larger than the amount we import form China.
US manufacturing made about $2.5 Trillion in 2021: https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/united-states/manufacturing-output
US imported from China about $0.5 Trillion in 2021 (all goods, not just manufacturing): https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html
I disagree with this assumption!
We don’t rely on China, we benefit from trading with them. Some of our goods go there, we get some of their goods. If a war breaks out and that trade stops; we have plenty of manufacturing capacity. And the point of having allies is that we would expect assistance in the event of a war, so we don’t expect US manufacturing to even completely fill the gap (similarly our allies would expect the US to help if China were to target one of them… except that the current administration is alienating everyone but Russia…).
If you look another level down into what each country manufactures; the US makes a lot of military equipment, and imports a lot of consumer goods form China. Our military would not lose much capacity by a loss in trade with China, but US consumers would lose some of their consumption options. Guess which one matters when it comes to war?
I don’t support tariffs as a tool to increase American manufacturing jobs because they don’t accomplish that goal. This is not a political belief; it’s derived from evidence. Many sources available, here’s one: https://files.taxfoundation.org/20180627113002/Tax-Foundation-FF595-1.pdf
Using tariffs as a diplomatic tool is only effective in extreme cases. Diplomacy is difficult and so many things are interrelated. If a tariff threat makes China capitulate to our position on Taiwan, why not just use a tariff threat to bring China completely into line on every other position? Tariffs are blunt, and cause harm (economic and diplomatic) to broad areas of both countries unrelated to the specific issue. Topical example: sanctions on Russia did not change their position on Ukraine, even though those were far more severe than just a blanket X% tariff and were supported by many other countries (multi-lateral as opposed to uni-lateral). If we want to influence China’s position on Taiwan, diplomacy is more effective than tariffs.
The US mil will certainly be negatively effected in the short term if China were to cut/be cut from manufacturing. This substack article is by a retired US navy/NATO officer who explains it better than I can, but the short answer is a LOT of very important munitions, vessels and equipment have chinese semiconductors in them
https://cdrsalamander.substack.com/p/you-cant-go-to-war-with-your-factory
Your positions do not seem to be supported by the facts. I don’t understand how you have maintained this perspective of interruptions and shipping affecting the US more than China. That certainly wasn’t the case during the pandemic.
And now with the tariff threats that we’re seeing, aerospace and military manufacturers are saying there are certain components they simply can’t manufacture here without importing from China. If tariffs are impeding that in anyway, I don’t see how they would survive a complete cut off. Especially without the raw resources we get from China, we couldn’t even set up independent manufacturing here if we wanted to.
My facts were provided and cited? I’d argue your positions are the ones not related to the facts:
This is a media statement, not a fact, and not reflected in industry data nor historical examples. There’s a cost they don’t want to pay, not a hard block. Manufacturing has historically been more than able to adjust, but at a cost. In the event of a war we’d likely pay that cost, in the face of tariffs it’s up to those individual manufacturers to decide. So we might see them choose to keep importing instead of replacing certain components… But that does not then mean they couldn’t do so.
I didn’t claim this at all? And I won’t argue it as relevant since interrupting shipping globally is not a relevant equivalent to bilateral trade halting.
I don’t feel like you’re making arguments in good faith, or you are disregarding my claims and raising straw man arguments… Apologies in advance as I’ll likely not continue this thread.
It’s not just a “media statement.” This is what they’re saying to their shareholders, who they are legally required to divulge the facts to.
I think you’re not appreciating the number of years it would take to move manufacturing bases and train up the local skillset. It’s not a ‘they can’t ever do it.’ It’s that it would take at least a decade, and at the rate tensions are escalating, they cannot get to the point of moving that production in time.