Is he trying to bend other countries to his will, replace income tax revenue, return American manufacturing jobs, raise prices for Americans, destabilize America’s government, enrich already rich Americans? Nobody seems to know what his intentions are with Tariffs.
Comments
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written.
Is he trying to bend other countries to his will, replace income tax revenue, return American manufacturing jobs, raise prices for Americans, destabilize America’s government, enrich already rich Americans? Nobody seems to know what his intentions are with Tariffs.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
There are 2 reasons why Trump wants tariffs
Spur nationalist fervor is my best guess. But his messaging has been pretty fucking incompetent on tariffs.
He is a true believer of Mercantilism.
The idea of Trump’s tariffs is to make it so that foreign companies can’t really compete in the American market, without producing their goods in America. So the hope is that the tariffs will force foreign companies to invest in new manufacturing plants in the US.
There are dozens of reasons why this is a catastrophically stupid approach that has basically no chance of working, but that’s the idea.
There can be multiple approaches of trying to explain such blatant un-economic nonsense.
I believed this during Trump’s first admin, but now I no longer think that’s it, as the messaging around this has become confused and Trump is seemingly trying to antagonize the whole world through tariffs at the same time.
Trump and his allies are actually planning to significantly lower the value of the dollar and thereby enabling them to surpress wages along with consumer prices in America to “redindustrialize” and to primarily help capital.
There is no reason. Trump is just stupid and doesn’t understand what tariffs even are and especially not what comparative advantages or the basics of trade theory are. He just seems to actually believe a trade deficit means a country is losing money and is thereby being “ripped off” and since he has a cult of personality and doesn’t take criticism well, nobody dares challenging him on that.
I am leaning towards #3 and I believe that #2 was created as a post-hoc strategy to use Trump’s proclivities to enrich capital and make it take advantage over labor by his backers and allies.
Take decisive action to impress the man-o-sphere.
The blue collar working class, and allied populists, have embraced the bizarre idea that the trade policy of Herbert Hoover is just, like, actually good for the working class. This is an idea that holds some sway across the spectrum, even on the populist parts of the left. Apart from the other potential reasons, its possible that Trump just genuinely agrees with the ignorant populist stance that tariffs are good for the working class – and/or just thinks that he can use them to appeal to the working class and shift more and more of them to the GOP
Such policy also aligns well with the aesthetics of economic nationalism more broadly
Multiple things:
As a bargaining chip.
As a way to bring back manufacturing to the USA.
To help raise revenue to offset his tax cuts, limiting the budget deficit impact.
He has a mafia mindset – issue threats, get stuff. He doesn’t understand that nations have the power the threaten back. In fact his distorted view of reality makes him fundamentally unable to understand that.
I don’t think he has any coherent vision for what the tariffs will do. My opinion is that he heard someone mention the idea of tariffs offhand like 20 years ago and the idea just stewed in the back of his head without any serious thought put into it. He thinks tariffs sound like a good idea, but doesn’t really know why he thinks that, other than maybe punishing his perceived enemies
I think the reasons I outline below are all true in Trump’s mind.
Pretext for conflict with Canada to try to make the pitch to annex it easier.
Attempt to cause a recession which can be deflationary. If done early in his term he can try to blame it on Biden.
Bargaining chip against other countries.
Thinks it will increase tax revenue so he can lower taxes for rich Americans.
I do not think he actually believes that manufacturing will return en-masse to the US due to his tariffs. To achieve that then companies need to believe that the tariffs will remain in place for 10+ years rather than being a bargaining chip against other countries. To the extent it does cause companies to return to the US it would be because they want to hedge tariff risk.
A combination of understanding that absolutely tanking the economy and isolating the US diplomatically plays into the goals of the super rich and Russia, and a rage-dementia based complete misunderstanding of “why we don’t make things in this country anymore.”
He’s an idiot who needs to act tough and combative and how dare entire nations not kiss his ring