If what Trump says is any sign to how MAGA explains it, then the answer is: if you don't want to pay those large fees, buy local. Sure the cost will go up, and significantly so in the "short term" (however long that is ...), but in the long term we will have more local manufacturing.
disclaimer: I personally don't agree with that, so no need to argue against me. Just answering OP's question, because I feel that it is important to understand the other side.
Ok - so here's an example I can provide input on.
I have a bunch of white oak from a tree I cut down and had milled into lumber.
I wanted to make a bunch of benches for friends/family, etc. I have the lumber so all I needed was the bench ends/legs.
I looked at the domestic options and it was going to cost. I couldn't find anyone that would sell a set of legs for under $300 a piece or wanted me to "contact them for pricing." and that's all BEFORE shipping.
Keep in mind that your local bigbox store sells an almost exact replica of the made in China bench legs with crap lumber for $99. It'd be cheaper for me to buy those, junk the lumber and use my own.
I then checked alibaba and walked through the process of getting RFQ. The competent sellers who knew what I wanted and what to do were easy to work with and quick to check the various shipping costs - the per unit price would be pretty low($20ish even with my low volume order) but shipping would be $50-$70 a per set of legs due to the weight of the cast iron. BUT, now, even with tariffs, that leg would go from $~90 to $180ish AND I'd still be well below what the domestic cost is.
If I go forward at all, I'll still probably go with the Alibaba folks. I don't see how USA manufacturers will suddenly start producing these sort of bulky intermediary consumer products anytime soon.
> buy local
I suspect for many imported items there is no local manufacturing and there won't be one. Oh well we'll see soon how the voters react to that.
And its going to be fine. Amish mostly make everything they need, have no debt, no trade deficits, have lots of kids and are thriving. I'm not saying this to be snarky, all Americans can be as happy as billionaines: https://www.businessinsider.com/if-you-want-to-be-happier-sh...
"Is it possible to step off the hedonic treadmill? The best approach involves silencing our desires, restraining the insatiable appetite of our dopamine neurons. This is what the Amish have done. They have learned to live without modern consumerism. They don't use cars, reject the Internet, avoid the mall, and prefer a quite permanence to heady growth. The end result is a happiness boom. The Amish turn out to be as satisfied with their lives as members of the Forbes 400. Furthermore, their rates of depression are more than ten fold lower than the rest of the American population. The Amish are content because they have learned to ignore their dopaminergic pleas for more." https://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2007/03/16/happiness-wealth-...
What would happen if everyone lived like the Amish though? I’m assuming they are still profiting from modern science they wouldn’t be able to come up with, right? Or are they refusing MRI scans and Chemotherapy too?
I think the point wasn't that that specific example scales to the whole nation but more that if that specific example works as well as it does at the scale that it does than surely some middle ground between "import basically every consumer good" and "the amish" would scale to the entire nation with acceptable tradeoffs.
> Furthermore, their rates of depression are more than ten fold lower than the rest of the American population.
One wonders if this is simply due to under-diagnosis.
My theory is that all our modern junk doesn't necessarily cause depression, but it allows us to take on more chronic depression and other mental problems (distraction, dopamine hits, etc.) Like the way added safety features to cars just caused drivers to drive worse to compensate.
>under diagnosis
Telling the Amish they're depressed sounds like a wonderful business oppportunity! Think of all the follow up products and services!