Tariffs are a short term lever for rebalancing the ability of your nation’s manufacturing sectors and skilled labor to produce both peacetime and wartime goods. We shortsightedly exported the jobs that kept our population’s skills polished. We need to rebalance that or we will eventually have to face that we exported our nations ability to defend itself against foreign forces, both physical and financial through monetary trade and mass production of supplies. It’s not a tax on its own citizens. It is meant to relocalize long term sources of prosperity, like localized mass production, community and regional self reliance, diverse skill set development across our population, etc.
You say 'we' and 'our' like individual property rights don't exist. That isn't consistent with American ideals. Companies should be free to come and go without government using any 'lever' to try and control economics. All they really need to do is fuck off and companies probably wouldn't want to leave. Using force always breaks something in an economy, even if you have the perception of fixing something else. Laissez-faire is the only rational policy and it's also the only policy consistent with freedom. Americans and companies can fix everything on their own by having government just fuck off entirely. Do nothing except remove all the somethings that broke everything.
Makes sense. I’m over here munching popcorn while watching the political happenings right now as I’m reading about how civilizations have tried throughout the ages to offer both freedom and longevity. I don’t have an answer for us, obviously. Stepping way back is what affords the perspective I put forward. I prefer a free market. I’m guessing that if something good comes from what’s happening, I think it falls in line with what I laid out. The cost of someone grabbing the steering wheel at the top of a nation of free people, is that it sucks when it messes with their individual freedoms and goals.
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