Posted on 10/30/2018 6:37:00 PM PDT by TBP
If you raise the cost of importing goods, you raise the price of those goods. When you raise the cost of goods, that raises the cost of living. ‘that makes the raise we get from having our taxes cut worthless.
Over the long haul, this will undo the good that the tax cuts are doing.
China today makes a lot of the "good stuff" that we (and other leading nations) used to make, before we gave the manufacturing away and shut down our domestic industries. China's competitors in these sectors are countries like Bangladesh and Vietnam and and Indonesia, not domestic US firms. The tariff will make the highest quality goods more expensive to American consumers, who will then go to Walmart to buy a cheaper Bangladeshi alternative (not a non-existent US-made alternative) - resulting in harm to China but no net benefit to the US economy. The tariffs are thus great news for these other countries.
But tariffs can't magically re-create domestic manufacturing by themselves - it will take a lot more changes to the current tax and regulatory environment that no Democrats and few Republicans are today willing to support. Plus, "the art has been lost" over thirty years of outsourcing - the older people who knew manufacturing have retired or died off and there are no young and willing replacements.
This is not only a US problem - I have South Korean business associates who lament that the young people there all want to work in technology and have no interest in manufacturing jobs. They are being forced to move their work to China because it can't be done domestically any more - the same thing that has happened here.
“Loads of good copper bottoms Revere etc in my local thrift stores too. Corelle and Pyrex ware too. I look to re-live America’s great industrial past and who knows about the future, It is not yet written.”
I pray that the future makes our country supply most of its own needs rather than rely on unfair trade deals that benefit the country of origin and a few over-paid executives fronting a building in the USA. Like our wonderful POTUS says - it’s terribly unfair!
I’ve scored some lovely Pyrex and Corelle mugs, the latter of which resist breakage, yet feel substantial, but not too heavy in my hands, as well as other dish brands like Syracuse China in thrift stores.
I buy new things on occasion, but I’ve learned to be more patient and not be dazzled by everything shiny and new. When I do need an item, I check the thrift stores first.
A few years ago during a Women’s Bible study, we participants talked about how much we buy, always looking at worldly examples of consumerism that change in color and style more rapidly than clothing fashion.
Some of us decided to be more wise and either make do or prowl garage sales and thrift stores for needed items. We were to be careful not to grab whatever caught our eye so as not to become hoarders, but to look for useful, beautiful things we would actually use in our homes.
At first it was household items, then we noticed there was good quality, classically-styled clothing on the racks that looked barely worn. Some clothes even had the sales tags still on them as if someone was too lazy to take the item back to the store! I scored some Coldwater Creek skirts and an LL Bean sweater that was like new! I wear that sweater a lot in the fall/winter with my jeans. It wears like a tank. :-)
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