Jon Stewart talked a lot about this on Monday, both in his monologue and interview with Chris Hughes.

If you were thoughtful about economic policy and truly believed a trade war was the solution, you'd prepare ahead of time (e.g. by stockpiling things like rare earth metals that are important to your economy and likely to be impacted by retaliatory tariffs).

That they haven't done that is one more indicator that they are thoughtlessly winging this. Even if there's a solution that involves tariffs, that's not the play they're running.

The long-term gain might be that this administration so significantly craters the economy and is so obviously responsible that enough voters recognize vote out enough of these clowns and accomplices to enact real useful reform (gerrymandering, electoral college, senate, filibuster, tax law, etc.)

Hi, studying economics :)

The issue is that labor productivity (level of tech) in American mfg hasn't broadly increased at the rate we'd need to manufacture many things at reasonable prices for the American consumer. This makes Baumol's cost disease a huge issue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect You can see this manifest in healthcare as one of the most egregious examples; the top cause of margin pressure for hospitals is labor: https://www.hfma.org/press-releases/health-systems-near-thei....

While we can still manufacture things that require comparatively high levels of skill, technology, and capex, it's never again (absent a depression greatly outstripping the 1930s) going to be profitable to pay American workers to make t-shirts rather than Bangladeshis.

There's a good argument to be made that a combination of outsourcing and illegal labor caused problems by suppressing investment in tech and automation for thirty years plus, and there are certain things we probably should make here. But ultimately the stuff we actually need to manufacture are things core to sustaining life and the military. Medical supplies, weapons, food, oil, metals, chemicals, etc.

We can, with time and good industrial policy, bring back some manufacturing. That would be a case of short-term pain for long-term benefit. But even then, that's true only insofar as we give people a shot to actually buy American. Moonshot investments in roboticization and industrial automation for a few years would really make this easier, along with using the huge amount of post-HS education dollars we spend to focus on training skilled engineers to implement this sort of thing, along with things like skilled machinists. But these tariffs don't really give American companies a shot.

We cannot, with any reasonably-good outcome, bring back manufacturing jobs. That midwest factory worker is never going to be paid $30/hour plus pension/retirement contributions, good medical, etc. to make regular, el cheapo consumer goods.

My two cents is that if this had been, from the start, a dedicated effort to decouple the US economy from Chinese producers, for national / economic security reasons, then they might have been able to convince me that the short term pain might result in something long-term beneficial.

The major problem they have with that, though, is that they started with Mexico and Canada, and then progressed to declaring (trade) war on the entire world, moves which are exactly the wrong thing if the goal was to painfully but beneficially decouple with China. In order to achieve that goal, we would have needed to strengthen our trading appliances with other countries in North America, Asia, and Europe. But they've done exactly the opposite.

(Note, though, that even this strategy wouldn't be getting much if any love from economists. It's hard to find credible economists who think tariffs are anything but dumb, economically. But we would see a lot more support from foreign policy folks, many of whom do think that economic decoupling from China would be good for non-economic reasons, despite being painful economically.)

I certainly would like to see more American made products and manufacturing, unfortunately, making that happen is not just a matter of shuffling money around, capricious tariffs, and the president posturing for "deals" like a real-estate shyster.

Our current situation is the result of decades of deliberate greedy systematic outsourcing of everything that can be outsourced. It's our own dumb fault. And it will take decades to reverse it if it's even possible. It's not a "short-term" kind of thing.

Very few and here is why. Making structural changes to an economy requires a lot of investment. But tariffs reduce investment in two ways:

1. Tariffs directly take money out of the coffers of private companies and move it into the government. Private companies therefore have less money to invest.

2. Tariffs are a tax on economic activity and therefore suppress it. This causes companies to want to hold more cash and invest more conservatively. Major changes take appetite for risk, which tariffs reduce.

In addition, the arbitrary, legally questionable way in which this particular set of tariffs has been imposed means they are not affecting long-term corporate planning. Instead most companies are seeking to just “wait them out” while issuing hollow press releases with big numbers they think the president wants to see.

There is a reason high tariffs are only implemented after very long, multi-generational intervals, e.g., 1820s, 1890s, 1930s, 2020s.

The consequences are so bad that everyone who remembers the disasters brought on by high tariffs must be dead for anyone to think it is a good idea.

So, even if the purported goals are good, even achieving them will be outweighed by the disaster.

Plus, companies in countries protected by high tariffs inevitably become globally uncompetitive.

Edit, add: Even worse, most high tariff schemes have distinguished between placing the high tariffs on only finished goods and exempting the raw materials or components from the tariffs. This administration makes almost no such distinctions, just sprays tariffs everything, so harms US manufacturers as well. The only exemptions are the ones who pay tribute (e.g., sponsoring inauguration, etc.), so it is almost more of an extortion scheme than a tariff plan. A particularly bad example was revealed as the Japanese delegation came to negotiate, asked what concessions the US wanted, and could get no straight answer [0]. It seems the US group just expects the tariffed nations to supplicate and bring adequate gifts, not make adjustments according to a master plan. Very strong indication there is no plan, which is the worst possible case.

So, while I completely agree with the concept of looking for a silver lining, I'm not seeing any...

[0] https://petapixel.com/2025/04/21/japan-cant-get-an-answer-on...

I think it is the permanent end of American economic/political/cultural dominance, which is a long-term gain for the world, but it's going to put the hurt on a lot of people (myself included). I am not quite altruistic enough to celebrate being sacrificed in this way, but I can see that when the future history books are written, they may look back at this as the end of a blight.

From an economic standpoint, completely free trade is best. From a national interest standpoint, the more key industries that are local, the better. The more inefficient, the more employment. And yes... that means higher prices for most everything.

>> short-term pain / long-term gain for American economic interests

That only works if the policy isnt changing day to day (or across presidential cabinets / administrations.) It takes a lot of capital and time to build local factories, and I would not feel comfortable with that investment w/o assurances there will still be a market for local goods next week, next month, or in 10yrs

Here's just one example where I think, "maybe".

I've been shopping for an Airbrush. These were a dream of mine as a kid. Back then the major brands were Made in the USA and were expensive enough that they were out of reach for 14 year old me.

Today the main companies from back then have "Made in the USA" on their websites but Badger (https://badgerairbrush.com) doesn't look like it's been updated since 2018 and Paasche (https://www.paascheairbrush.com) seems only slightly better.

Another popular and slightly newer brand is Iwata from Japan.

I suspect that Chinese imports have been eating these companies lunch for decades. I suspect that the Chinese government is subsidizing the products and their shipping and artificially lowering the cost and that they have been doing this for a very long time.

> "tariffs imposed during the 19th century spurred industrialization and ultimately positioned America as a global superpower"

it's not "the one thing", which contributed to it. There are multiple factors which spurred industrialization, some of them are:

   * Europe and Japan was destroyed and they had other problems to deal with
   * Soviet Union was seen as an enemy
   * Many US soldiers returned home from war and they needed a job
   * When many people started working in manufacturing, they needed different optimizations for their process, which lead to more manufacturing

Tariffs may have helped, but they were not the only reason. as an example, look at Brazil today, they have lots and lots of tariffs

From an economic perspective these new blanket import tariffs are a classic own-goal: tariffs are good for developing industries, but these levies hit huge, mature supply chains, so the main outcome is higher consumer prices, squeezed real wages, and slower growth.

A common example is Smoot-Hawley’s tariffs deepening the Great Depression, and early 2025 data already show trade and hiring slipping, but we won't know the full effect for a while.

As for the "bring manufacturing to the US" argument - tariffs often reroute, not reshore. GoPro moved from China to Mexico, Apple from China to India, Hasbro from China to Vietnam, to name a few.

I think that even if tariffs were the solution this administration is not competent enough to make it work.

The problem is the chaos.

No competently run company is going to invest in more-expensive domestic production based on what the administration is doing because there can't be any expectation that policies will remain in place until production can be brought online. It doesn't even make sense to consider planning to onshore production because there's no reasonable expectation that the current policies will be in place in a month, much less in the year or more needed for a production change.

I think this depends on what you mean by “American economic interests”, ie top-line numbers or the economic future of individual Americans.

I genuinely believe that this will be a decade long struggle to generate a long-term benefit to the American nation (ie, the average person) via tariffs as a tool of class warfare and economic restructuring. If you read around MAGA forums, you’ll see this described as a “Mag7 problem, not a MAGA problem”.

But that may not be what you’re asking.

No. Most of these goods are things like blankets and spoons. Do you really want to manufacture those to be at the lead? Even if you hate China, you can offshore them somewhere else (ie: South of America). Instead, the policy should have been a targeted one: That is target a few key industries that are critical (ie: ship building) and put forward a plan to move capacity back to the US.

The trouble with people who keep trying to show me the potential positives with this administration are that even if they were there, and they often are not, they're an accident if they exist - not an intended result. These guys are just wrecking shit based on their own interests - looking for a silver lining is helping them out.

Yes. China already dropped some of their tariffs today. More to follow.

The goal was never to bring manufacturing back to the US. It's to negotiate new tariffs.

With China specifically, I could also see a deal that included stricter enforcement of US IP laws, which is definitely destroying businesses and the job loss that comes with it.

This genuinely looks like a real "emperor has no clothes" scenario.

Trump is 100% convinced his (long disproven both theoretically and empirically) trade theory is true, and no one can talk him out of it.

So it has to play out until the effects are unbearable.

Or until congress votes to take his tariff powers away: https://www.kwch.com/2025/04/30/senate-voting-resolution-tha...

> Curious if there is anyone here who genuinely sees this as short-term pain / long-term gain for American economic interests.

I don't. I see this as the intentional razing of the US economy and interests.

Why is this a “political” angle? If you believe its for a long term gain, then you believe in a certain economic theory that others may not believe. What does politics hace anything to do with that?

Don't see how this will be short term pain.

Supply chains took a long time to get established again after covid for things coming in.

Do Americans really want to do the manufacturing they don't want to do anymore?

> Curious if there is anyone here who genuinely sees this as short-term pain / long-term gain for American economic interests.

I think at a base level someone must think that isolationism is good. Personally I think the world should be building deeper connections not less in order for humanity to move to the next level. I fear that we'll never reach that level without an existential force (like aliens showing up a la Star Trek). Until then, our petty differences will continue to get in the way.

> EDIT: I can find very few voices (not currently working directly for the administration). There's Jeff Ferry who believes "tariffs imposed during the 19th century spurred industrialization and ultimately positioned America as a global superpower". (That historical view is uncommon and wouldn't account for the current realities of global supply chains.)

IIRC At the same time (early 20th c.), the US was a major net importer of people. This led to a very low effective tariff rate.

Tariffs may be helpful for some areas of the economy, but the scorched earth strategy used by this administration is guaranteed to hurt the economy more than it helps. First of all, the US is posing as an enemy for every other nation, including so-called "allies". It is an isolationist program that will inevitably weaken the status of the dollar (no need for dollars is the US is not interested in trading).

There was literally centuries of European history where every European government had massive tariffs on the others.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercantilism

This era also featured lots of wars between European nations and spurred foreign conquests/colonialism.

It's a bargaining tactic from a lunatic. Trump thinks countries will call him offering to do things to have the tariffs removed. You are applying reason to someone who has been showing signs of dementia for decades.

No, no one with a brain thinks that. Our economy is built on interconnected trade and cheap crap from developing economies.

Wilson drummed up the idea in the early 1920's, but didn't really follow through putting tariffs in place, Hoover did and combined with the dustbowl, sent America into the Great Depression. This is typical of what tariffs always do, but that little extra disaster almost made it impossible to get out of it

After talking to a bunch of Trump voters over the past 8 years, I have heard a common theme. They view the policies of the past 50 years, driven by the 'uniparty', as they say, leading to eminent catastrophic collapse. To them it's existential problem and they only have one choice.

Appealing to economists is the opposite of what they want, because economists look at macroeconomics efficiency which encourages globalism. They would rather be inefficient and hold on to their identity.

The benefits of it are almost entirely “resilience during wartime”. Economists tend not to consider war very much, because it is chaotic, tends to strike at random moments that are only loosely related to economic conditions, and involves people actively destroying productive capacity instead of building it up. But of war is a given, you can see some fairly obvious benefits of having critical supply chains entirely contained within your borders. There’s ample historical data to back that up too: Japan (with its energy supply chain almost entirely outside of its borders) was forced to embark on wars of conquest in the rest of Asia to secure its energy needs, while the U.S. (which at the time was both a large oil producer and a large manufacturer) could sit behind its oceans and only enter the war when Japan’s territorial ambitions collided with it.

Likewise, if you take “WW3 is going to happen in the near future” as a given, almost all of the Trump administration’s actions make sense, from the crackdown on dissent to the effort to deport any foreign nationals to the saber rattling against Greeenland and Panama to “drill baby drill” to appeasement of Russia to the increased defense budget to the tariffs and efforts to bring semiconductor and drone supply chains stateside to the elimination of climate change programs. The strategy is very clearly to hole up between our two oceans and produce everything ourselves while the rest of the world destroys itself.

Of course, you can’t say “WW3 is imminent” without making it significantly more likely and scarring your populace to boot, which creates some very strong information distortions and illogical actions.

I believe tariffs could be helpful in certain areas if done carefully, but don't think the current administration is up to it. Examples of successful use of tariffs might be South Korean industries like car making.

For me I see short term gain long term pain, as volatility pays my account but my local economy is going broke and my account isn't big enough to offset the negative effects of it.

Maybe long-term gain, but it would take a long time. And businesses aren't going to invest if they think policy might completely reverse in 3 years with a new government.

Yeah, what positioned America as a superpower was nuclear weapons and having an infrastructure not reduced to slag by World War 2.

Depends on how long term. A crash of the global economy may be the best way to prevent at least some climate change catastrophe.

There is an old saying that a man lost his precious sword when sitting on a moving boat. Instead of jumping into the water, he simply left a mark on the side of the boat where presumably the sword slipped into the river. "What are you doing?", his friends asked curiously. The man replies, "Oh, I think it's too dangerous to get into the water right now, so I'll mark the place and get into the water when the boat arrives. It's safer!"

Given the shoddy execution I doubt there will be gain even if there was a hypothetical path in the theory

Kevin O’Leary, Aka Mr Wonderful, has appeared on CNN a number of times defending tariffs.