Summary
Fox News host Julie Banderas warned that President-elect Donald Trump’s proposed tariffs—25% on products from Mexico and Canada and 10% on those from China—could significantly raise costs for Americans, as many businesses rely on foreign goods.
While some companies are shifting to U.S.-based suppliers or stockpiling goods ahead of the tariffs, Banderas noted that buying American often results in higher prices.
She highlighted that the financial burden would likely fall on consumers, questioning, “Who’s going to pay for that? We are.”
Economists have also warned of inflation risks.
Literally companies could start on-shoring, how foreign car makers all have plants in America now, but you know doom and gloom for outrage bait.
I mean let’s think this through. Say it costs many millions, billions even, to create new manufacturing plants for any of the major players. It will take probably years to complete and on top of that US workers have much stronger protections than most of the world with significantly higher labor costs to boot. consumers would immediately pay more because of the tariffs, and then even if the “protectionism” works, we’re still paying more, even if it’s to US workers and companies. This isn’t even to mention that the taxpayer is likely going to foot the bill for construction of new factories as they’ve done with Intel etc.
i’m struggling to see any merits to this idea. Can you elaborate?
The other big risk is that in 4 years, the tariffs could be removed with a change of government, or earlier when the GOP realises how bad their mistake is.
So these businesses have to decide do they want to invest billions in plants that could be redundant before they’re even completed.
I think making products in America is a wonderful idea. As you said, won’t stop the tariff price increases, but there’s merit in investing in manufacturing in countries more capable of increased automation like the United States, Japan, and Western Europe thanks to skilled engineering workforces. This is especially true because if you intend to do manufacturing ethically you’re better off competing somewhere where the minimums in worker treatment and environmental protection are higher.
Now if you need manual labor as cheap as possible, go to South Asia and South America, we can’t compete with them on that unless we’re imposing ludicrous tariffs.
Why are tariffs the tool? Why now? Why disrupt anything for the benefit of corporations and their… thousand(s?) of workers? Unemployment is quite low already, and as far as I know manufacturing has been largely leaving the US for what I assume are economic reasons that will persist longer than the tariffs.
Why not laws requiring ethical sourcing of materials and labor if ethics is your concern?
Full agree. I think I just had shit reading comprehension this morning. Tariffs are a terrible way to achieve this goal. Laudable goal, but demanding better conditions or subsidizing American manufacturing are far better means to achieve it.
Auto parts generally aren’t made in the US, only assembled here.
Toyota is kind of a counter example here. I’m grateful to them for opening several factories in my home state.
It’s funny to me that you can buy a (partially) American made and assembled Toyota. Or be a real patriot and buy a Chinese made and Mexican assembled F-150.
You’ll be surprised how expensive everything is to build if you pay domestic wages instead of buying things dirt cheap from other countries where wages are low due to slave-like working conditions. This is probably what Trump wants to establish in the US, but when other factors like housing, food etc are already way more expensive than they are in those countries, this creates a poverty hellscape for y’all. The result will be that people can’t even afford to live at the standard of a chinese factory worker. Enjoy.
On shoring takes a long time and American labor is more expensive than Chinese and Mexican labor. I work in manufacturing and it takes years to build capacity when you already have a facility. Oh and think multimillion dollar investments with high risk.
I’m not saying they can’t onshore. I’m saying it’ll be slow and expensive and possibly more expensive than not, and because it’s slow the customers will eat the cost long enough that they won’t lower prices when they finish.
I want to believe this is true. I hope that things go that way - if America leads a shift in the way the world gets it’s goods that could be a good thing. But I’m not sure that’s what will happen, honestly.