the low skill manufacturing jobs they took were going to leave the US anyway.

… Yes and no. A lot of junk, sure. But there was no necessity to move much of large scale manufacturing over—the primary reason it happened was rampant consumerism desiring the cheapness that lower standards brought, without regard to workers or the ability of the national economy to have a modern strength against foreign influence.

Production is fully capable to have been kept in the usa for a lot of products, as long as people were willing to buy less. It’d have been a greater benefit to our economy and the environment overall.

But tariffs aren’t the answer here - instead, the answer is to support local industries by giving them government contracts to produce their goods, which the government can then use and/or stockpile when we aren’t in a time of crisis.

Tariffs are an important tool. They should never be the only tool used from the tool box. But nonetheless, they’re important to disincentive the moving away manufacturing based just on wages. They make products more expensive, allowing local products to survive more easily —but if you rely on them too heavily, your local industries become stagnant.

Most goods are not reasonable to spend government money on as well. That works great for medical goods and food, but not much else.

That’s just the forward march of technological progress.

When companies like Amazon use that logic to cut wages to half of competition… I got a problem.

Hear! Hear!

America gave china the manufacturing jobs by failing to block slave labor imports and failing to put proper tariffs to account for differences in cost of living to a reasonable extent. I say this at risk of sounding like a trumpy…

This is to be clear that while I advocate for some level of global inter investment, having capacity in your home country is ever very important. Usa could’ve kept the jobs if they were smart back then.

The vast majority of parachutes are not