Wasn’t the point to make off-shore manufacturing more expensive to incentivize manufacturing jobs domestically?
Depends on your ideological camp. There’s an anti-trade camp that thinks insourcing the entire US economy makes us more independent and improves our labor participation rate. There’s also an anti-income tax camp that thinks the tariffs can replace the IRS. They’re kind-of in tension, as more domestic industry would mean lower tariff revenues, while higher tariffs (to replace the income tax) would discourage the trade it is intended to tax.
Have you heard of any new manufacturing plants being built domestically?
Would these plants exist without the tariffs? Probably. Trump’s only been in office for ten months and new manufacturing plants take years to plan and build. But if we see a permanent GOP majority (or a Dem base that just chases the GOP’s tail, like centrist Dems have historically done since Reagan), then tariffs will become entrenched and domestic manufacturing will have a real incentive relative to overseas imports.
But its still a juggling act between cost of labor/access to materials abroad and cost of production at home. What we’ve seen a lot of in the states is assembly plants - particularly in the automotive sector - where foreign car companies ship in parts at a low price and turn them into “Made In America” vehicles that sell at a high price.
Depends on your ideological camp. There’s an anti-trade camp that thinks insourcing the entire US economy makes us more independent and improves our labor participation rate. There’s also an anti-income tax camp that thinks the tariffs can replace the IRS. They’re kind-of in tension, as more domestic industry would mean lower tariff revenues, while higher tariffs (to replace the income tax) would discourage the trade it is intended to tax.
Here’s a list from June 2025
Would these plants exist without the tariffs? Probably. Trump’s only been in office for ten months and new manufacturing plants take years to plan and build. But if we see a permanent GOP majority (or a Dem base that just chases the GOP’s tail, like centrist Dems have historically done since Reagan), then tariffs will become entrenched and domestic manufacturing will have a real incentive relative to overseas imports.
But its still a juggling act between cost of labor/access to materials abroad and cost of production at home. What we’ve seen a lot of in the states is assembly plants - particularly in the automotive sector - where foreign car companies ship in parts at a low price and turn them into “Made In America” vehicles that sell at a high price.
We could see a lot more of that in the future.