Markk wrote: ↑Sun Mar 30, 2025 3:14 am
If I recall correctly, US trade balances out at around $6 out for every $4 in. It’s a pretty reasonable split. The ‘deficit’ side is so large because of the huge amount of trade overall, and shows that our economy is quite strong, with an expected amount of consumption due to Americans having sufficient resources to do so.
We have a 750 billon dollar deficit, in one year, is not reasonable in my opinion. If it is a 6 out for every 4 in, that is a 2 dollar swing. No business can remotely stay a float with that ratio of loss vs gain.
Well, then I guess you can always force the economy into recession and increase the cost of everything by 25%, and then end up with a smaller trade deficit for a country with an even poorer middle class.
Tariffs slow consumption. They have to, given that the number of dollars available to chase goods doesn’t magically increase in step with applied tariffs. Now, if you were to alternatively cap imports to somehow create an ‘equal’ balance, what would you base your product decisions on? And how would that affect the cost of goods, with the same number of dollars now vying for a sudden deficit of $750 billion in merchandise and services?
Maybe for somethings, there are a lot of variables, it depends on availability and trade with other partners. If tariffs are put on French wine, you can buy domestic and consumption stays the same and benefits our countries businesses
That’s not how it works. You may see sales drop on French wines but you’ll likely just see consumption drop overall anyway, due to higher prices on everything else. If you’re imposing tariffs on almost every good, then folks will cut back on unnecessary items to compensate for the budget-busting effects of tariffs. They’ll purchase less wine from domestic producers, as well. They’ll eat out less. They’ll buy fewer clothes, or will get more of what they want from thrift stores. They’ll buy less beef and switch to pork or chicken. These are the sorts of things that demonstrate how tariffs drag down sales for ‘made in America’ items and local businesses as well.
In the simplest terms: if people weren’t buying American versions of products because they were more expensive, why would people buy those same products if their money suddenly purchases
much less than it used to because of new tariffs?
The answer is: they won’t. And if folks aren’t buying more of the domestically-produced items, then there isn’t going to be an investment in new factories to meet a hoped-for increased demand that won’t actually materialize.
You keep talking about ‘manufacturing jobs’ as if they’re all paying high wages. As noted earlier in this conversation, they’re not necessarily doing so, even for auto workers. And with that being the reality of things, you’ve yet to even define what you think is a ‘good’ wage. Earlier you were knocking a $28/hour pay for Amazon warehouse workers but suggesting that a list of ‘manufacturing’ vocations were somehow better at the same pay levels.
But pay is only part of the equation. If a young family’s primary earner works at Nissan’s Smyrna, TN plant earning that rate, but doesn’t receive healthcare insurance coverage or any childcare benefit, then that worker is forking out an additional $2K to 3K a month for those services, on top of whatever they’re paying for rent or mortgage. And this is what’s killing off the middle class in America. It’s not so much the lack of jobs paying ‘x’ dollars and that happen to be in manufacturing. It’s not that flat screen TVs need to be somehow cheaper, and that iPhones should be $100 less, neither of which will happen anyway if we make them here. It’s the fact that the basics of family life are much more expensive than they used to be. If you were concerned about the middle class, then you wouldn’t be advocating for tariffs that will raise prices for struggling families by another 25 percent. You’d instead be seriously considering the other, extremely expensive factors and obstacles that face our struggling middle and lower income class.
Well see Cakes, we have a fundamental difference of opinion. What we do know for sure, and aside from our opinions, is that free trade is not working and it is getting worse, and our middle class is shrinking, and like I wrote, the top 1% of earners for the first time make more that the entire 60% of "middle class" earners.
In the midst of you merely repeating fluffy talking points, you forgot to consider how the other factors I pointed out are what is really killing the American middle class, as opposed to your belief that we’ll all be able to afford healthcare, childcare, housing, and an increase of 25% on most of our consumables if we can all just have a manufacturing job paying $28 an hour.
I’m sure that you have a calculator close by somewhere; run the numbers on that and get back to me.
I believe the nation needs manufacturing, and the innovation that comes with it, you apparently do not.
I believe that the nation needs manufacturing. So did the Biden Administration, and they did the work to turn the situation around and set it on track for serious gains:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/courtneyfi ... o-benefit/
What the nation
doesn’t need are ill-conceived tariffs that are designed to appeal to smooth-brained MAGA mindsets and to feed the Trump Administration’s desire to finance tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, while saddling low-income and middle-class Americans with a budget-busting 25% increase in costs, higher prices for food and housing, and a recession.
