> I personally feel bad for the environment
1 item per day is certainly not efficient, but nowadays temu and aliexpress batch things over a small period so that shouldn't really happen...
> and all the people on the losing side of cheap low quality junk production
Remember that taking away bad jobs does not save anyone, quite the contrary. People go from having shit jobs to no jobs, or even worse jobs with lower-profile companies.
Helping them requires creating vast numbers of better paying jobs with better working condition in their country, which require redirecting vast amounts of money to those countries. E.g., by buying even more stuff from those regions, but from manufacturers paying better wages (and selling goods more expensively), so they end up having to massively expand and hire more.
I am bugged more by local environmental impacts.
Around the time that manufacturing started moving to China en masse in the 1990s I started to hear about trichloroethylene contamination at manufacturing sites in the U.S. Look up "trichloroethylene united states" in Google and you'll probably get results about how our marines were exposed at Camp Jejune and are now eligible for V.A. benefits. A search for "trichloroethylene china" might turn up a picture of a truck full of barrels from a company that wants to send you those barrels.
That stuff is all over Silicon Valley. Santa Clara County actually has one of the most if not the most EPA superfund sites. It's the leftover legacy of chip manufacturing. When you rent in the Bay Area, the landlord does not have to disclose TCE contamination to you. TCE can cause birth defects and low birth weight in weeks if breathed in by pregnant women. If you're renting in the Bay Area, Google the address and make sure the property is not over a TCE contamination area.
> Helping them requires creating vast numbers of better paying jobs with better working condition in their country, which require redirecting vast amounts of money to those countries
This was the logic under Deng, and the reason China is now a peer state. Unfortunately when doing business with communists, enriching them doesn't help the individuals move out of poverty because that would require wages to rise and that happens for political reasons not merit in a single party system
If we enrich the CCP we just end up with an adversary capable of taking us on. That's why tariffs.
"If we enrich the CCP we just end up with an adversary capable of taking us on. That's why tariffs."
This argument is absolutely accurate and somewhere between two and six decades late depending on who you feel like blaming for offshoring. Present day all we're doing is poking inflation with a stick, threatening the bond market (and eventually the dollar reserve), and encouraging economic partners to look elsewhere for stability. 3 guesses how all that ends.
The thing that really annoys me is tariffs could have been used SO much more intelligently. For example a 24 month increasing schedule. That gives business the kind of incentive to affect manufacturing and something they can plan against.
But now we have a dumpster fire and tariffs will have an even worse reputation.
It might have been better reputation-wise than the current game of chicken, but tariffs will always sour economic partnerships, which in turn leads to bolstering alternative economic partnerships...
This is objectively untrue, tariffs exist all around the world and countries are still trading.
That tariffs are in use is not proof that it is untrue. Even with the current dumpster fire we still trade with the US, but that obviously does not mean there has been no harm.
For countries, tariffs is not something that is just shrugged off as it impacts their economy, there will always be political countermeasures to strongly discourage that tariffs are applied that harms them. Retaliatory tariffs, impact on other negotiations and relationships, etc.
For companies, tariffs harm profits and fair competition on both supply chain and consumer side, depending on where the tariffs are located. The company would strategize for maximum profit margins, circumventing tariffs, remove countries from their supply chain, and focusing on more profitable markets.
It wouldn't be a boycott the same way it is now of course. It would be a slower process. But tariffs is a way to force the market and always have wide negative effects. One just hopes that certain long-term side-effects (like high import cost causing focus on driving down local supply cost) is worth the impact (local cost of living increase, drop in investments, drop in friendly reputation).
The tricky part is the goal is another tax cut.
Right now, after all of the other tax cuts, our budget deficit is slightly larger than the US discretionary budget.
Which means that, even if DOGE cut everything, there's still no way to close the deficit without raising taxes.
Enter the tariffs.
Why tariffs on Madagascar?
>Unfortunately when doing business with communists, enriching them doesn't help the individuals move out of poverty because that would require wages to rise and that happens for political reasons not merit in a single party system
But poverty has dropped and income has risen under the CCP? You can argue that the CCP doesn't actually care about "individuals moving out of poverty", and all they care about is staying in power, but this is the sort of accusation that could be levied against governments in the west as well.
Apparently the CCP does suppress wages in various ways to keep export goods manufactured cheaply/competitively. It's probably more of an economic strategy than an expression of collectivism but I can't be sure.