Yeah, the troll smiley was because I reckon in this day and age setting tariffs would completely destroy your exports, and without exports you can't afford nearly as much imports, leading to USSR-style shortages of pretty much everything.
My point was that the tariff itself sort of screws you over, even before you factor in retaliatory tariffs etc. If you jack up the price of something you just sell less, meaning all along the supply line people are losing jobs. Sure, they can argue they've "made" some American jobs because after the tariffs a higher percentage of the labor was American, but overall, it's not likely to offset the job losses that came about because of the tax-hike/price-hike the tariffs represent.
EDIT: As for the USSR, it's informative to really read up on why they had shortages. It turns out the real problem was that they were hit with inflationary pressures due to the oil crisis, and responded with enacting price controls. That was the new thing they did differently before and after the big shortages. In fact they'd grown from basically last place in europe before the revolution to the 2nd biggest economy in the world by 1970.
The real lesson here is about how enforcing price controls fucks you over as a way of dealing with inflation because it leads to hoarding and shortages, even if you increase production. Venezuela is seeing that now. To combat inflation the new government enacted a series of price controls, now Venezuela has massive shortages even though production and imports have actually risen. The media portrays that as "collapsing production" because it sells a better story. (also note that inflation was rampant in venezuela decades before the socialists were ever elected).
Author
Topic: Doc Helgoland's Asylum for the Politically American: T+0 (Read 1424445 times)