Tariffs are not a new concept and have been used historically to build economies. Top China analysts in the Obama administration credited its economic rise to protective tariffs and high barriers to entry for any foreign companies to sell in country.

I’m probably a bit older than most lemmy users and remember when tariffs were a major talking point for democrats as a positive thing to protect American jobs. Hell, growing up in the Midwest, all my dad and his buddies that worked union jobs had to vote democrat because of their aggressive tariff policy to protect their jobs.

So what if trump is right about tariffs and it reinvigorates the American economy? Will people find another reason to credit the success to? Will it be the end of blue collar voting for the democrats?

Edit: Markets are rebounding hard, I bought low, glad Lemmy is full of pseudo intellectual economic morons. How is Lemmy going to cope now?

  • spacecadet@lemm.eeOP
    110·
    8 days ago

    I feel like that’s going to be the response. When stocks were dropping “THIS IS BECAUSE OF TRUMPS TARIFFS!!!” And now that they are going back up they will say “Well…. There are a lot of factors that go into global economics and it’s not a monolith”

    • SunsofoldEnglish
      3·
      8 days ago

      Saying ‘the response’ is kind of pretending it’s a monolith. There will be a lot of carefully considered discussion, regardless of what the result is, because that’s what adult humans do. Then there will be the great lumps of BS that are projected by party mouthpieces and parroted by the party followers. I’m less interested in the social media chatter as a response and more interested in the response from the other countries.

      China’s choice to place export restrictions on things like Yttrium and other rare earth metals, when they control ~3/4ths of the world’s supply, could put companies around the world out of business or under Chinese soft power. Some of America’s biggest blue chip companies are reliant on those materials. China is not going to make it easy if even possible to get those elements for US companies. Companies in Europe and Asia could also be targetted with it as an implementation of Chinese soft power.

      Another issue to consider is the recovery itself. The market always craps its pants when Trump speaks because the thing the market loves is predictability and Trump is unpredictable. It’s hard to say how comfortable the investor class will be with taking risks on new investments when one announcement from the oval office can drop share prices to a new 52 week low.

      Facing all this, it’s hard to care much about the chatter from party loyalists.