We should let Asian countries manufacture things like t-shirts, sneakers, bamboo baskets, toys and so on and sell them to us for almost nothing. If we made those things here, we wouldn't be able to afford them! Consider this: minimum wage in Vietnam is $200 per month!
What we should be doing is not bringing back manufacturing of such cheap things. Instead, we should manufacture things other countries cannot easily manufacture, such as Nvidia chips, Boeing airplanes, GE jet engines, heavy machinery such as from Caterpillar, medical equipment including robotic surgery machines, immunotherapy and other advanced treatments, gene editing and other biotech products, implantable medical devices, DNA sequencing, nanotech, satellites and aerospace tech, telecom equipment and so on. We can charge a premium price for these products because other countries cannot easily copy us.
Let other countries manufacture cheap things like toys and t-shirts. We'll buy their products low and sell our products high.
Now, a fair question to ask here is, what makes us uniquely qualified to manufacture such high-tech products and sell them to other countries for premium prices? The answer is our universities. Our universities attract the smartest students from around the world. And they stay here after getting their masters and PhDs. The answer is also immigration. We are able to attract the best and the brightest scientists and engineers from around the world.
Trump's mistake is spraying tariffs across everything without carefully evaluating what type of manufacturing we want to bring back to the US, and of course, disappearing immigrant university students under various pretexts.
Discussion (131 points, 2 hours ago, 178 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43605670
Does anyone have a good commentary on what's after what comes next?
I don’t really understand where he got the power to impose arbitrary tariffs? Isn’t that reserved for Congress?
tariffs?? its hard!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhiCFdWeQfA&t=57s
I could imagine, maybe, that if tariffs were 100% here to stay, that then, after some period of pain, lasting a few years, investors would have built replacement infrastructure domestically. (The word 'maybe' is doing a lot of work here, but let's roll with it, for the sake of argument.)
But this administration is already using tariffs as a negotiating tool, a cudgel. "If country X does Y, maybe the administration will cut them a break."
That means, as an investor, there is simply no certainty that makes it safe enough to invest in domestic US infrastructure. What if I build a factory and then the tariff evaporates?